“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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A young boy grows up in gritty Limerick – a different view of Ireland.
A wonderful, searing book.
How true this book is is open to discussion. But having never faced poverty like this, having a poverty stricken life written down with such elegant prose, made facing such a life immediate and devastating. We don’t know how lucky we are, or how others live until we read such revealing bios.
Angela’s Ashes should be on everyone’s bucket list of books.
One of the best books I’ve ever read. A hard scrap autobiography, a story of surviving a terrible childhood and finding your way through life anyway.
Hard to read, but telling of the time.
Realistic view of a woman and her children, whose husband is uncaring, in the early part of the 20th century.
Not to my liking. Too depressing.
This book is by far one of the best I have ever read. I read it years ago but will never, ever get it out of my mind. I highly recommend it. After all, it did win the Pulitzer Prize. If you haven’t read it please do. You will love it.
A stunning true story of a boy speaking out — not very different from my own girl’s story
It was quite simply an amazing story, very sad. It was so well written, I couldn’t put it down
Amazing.
It was a very moving story. I had a hard time putting it down.
I loved this book. The story will remain with me forever. It’s a book you won’t forget!
Very very sad reading – you might keep hoping it’s a novel, which it is not.
exceptionally written. a moving and unforgettable memoir.
This book kept my interest begin to end. It’s about a poor Irish family’s life in NYC and Ireland. Great human story.
It has been awhile since I read this book but I was moved by the characters
Resilient children dealing with a sad childhood. And best of all, an adult, the author has no ill feelings towards his parents. He intuitively knew his mother was doing the best she could with what she had.
sad story.