“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.” So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish … Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank’s mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank’s father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy — exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling– does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father’s tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank’s survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig’s head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors–yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness. Angela’s Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt’s astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.
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One of the best books I have ever read. A book about the power that institutions have over our lives and the destructive power of poverty.
This is a true story. It breaks your heart but also builds it up.
one of my favorite books of all time, along with To Kill a Mockingbird
Awesome!
Great book
I was mesmerized in this book, I couldn’t put it down until I’d read it thru’. The sad but true, life story, of a young child, growing up in poorest Ireland. The poverty was devastating. His parents were overworked, sick, had given up on life, and providing for their children. A dismal, sad story. Fortunately, the child grows up and becomes super …
How did a man who came from this horrid background manage to rise above his pitiful beginnings with the mother who was left to raise him in such dire circumstances? I couldn’t imagine having to endure this life! It was depressing as hell to read, but not as bad as having to live it, I’m sure!
One of my favorite books!
An autobiography that is a must read. You will identify with the characters and nwonder how each of them made it through the life of poverty alcoholism caused.
I found this author to be a great storyteller. This novel was honest, witty and told written with great skill. It is a wonderful read.
Very few books make me cry. This one did. Amazing.
One of my all time favorite books.
Good read, but not life-changing.
I just could not get into this book, even though I know it is a best seller. However, I just finished my way through ‘Tis. Not a favorite of mine.
Terribly sad and depressing.
We never know what other people go thru in a life time.
It is amazing that Frank McCourt made a success of himself after such a bleak childhood, but he did. His childhood was tragically shaped by an alcoholic father and the indignities of the Catholic Church, but Frank McCourt tells a story so eloquently that it comes off the paper as something beautifil.
Good but sad.
I love learning about other people, even when their lives are not one I would like to live. I read this book almost 20 years ago, and I still remember that I was moved by so many of the circumstances, and cried for the losses, but still recommend it to anyone who likes to learn history and how families function.
Very well written.