“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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wonderful story of life in Ireland.
Amazing true story!
Boundless tragedy and hardships told so expressively – worth your tears
You will laugh and cry! A beautiful book
A heartbreaker of a memoir. This Irishman has a story to tell and the gift to tell it well.
What an ending!
Beautifully written.
I read this many years ago and loved it!
A good historical encounter of the period.
It has been many years since I read this book but I really enjoyed it and bought the sequel.
A story about growing up in Ireland in the poorest of conditions. Sad but heartwarming. Definitely an eye opener. Loved it!
Reading something I never thought I’d know about. Reading from another culture and time. Such a deal…!
He writes of a tragic childhood without a drop of self pity. The writing style is outstanding!
This book was very easy to read and very hard to put down. It is a very well written story about a little boy and his family. Really a must read.
This astounding book tells a story that is harrowing, horrifying and yet frequently laugh-out-loud funny. The author recounts his childhood of unbelievable poverty, deprivation and neglect in a voice stoic and yet with a deep undercurrent of wrenching emotion. His tale of a father who lives in a liquor bottle and a mother whose soul is crushed …
great writing
The book has very sad episodes and very happy episodes. You will find yourself rooting for some characters and wishing some would be hurt.
I read this a very long time ago when it first was published. McCourt is a good story-teller and the book is autobiographical. It is quite a story.
Great book. Loved it.
Realistic and gritty. Reveals the tough family lives of Irish immigrants.
This was a very realistic and sad story about an Irish family ……the husband,or father of the children was an alcholic…..and because of that the entire family suffered miserably….a very touching story….