McCourt's Pulitzer Prize winning look back at his childhood. "It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while..." Angela's Ashes is Frank McCourt's sad, funny, bittersweet memoir of growing up in New York in the 30s and in Ireland in the 40s. It is a story of extreme hardship and suffering, in Brooklyn tenements and Limerick slums -- too many children, too little money, his mother Angela barely coping as his father Malachy's drinking bouts constantly brought the family to the brink of disaster. It is a story of courage and survival against apparently overwhelming odds. Written with the vitality and resonance of a work of fiction, and a remarkable absence of sentimentality, Angela's Ashes is imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's distinctive humour and compassion. Out of terrible circumstances, he has created a glorious book in the tradition of Ireland's literary masters, which bears all the marks of a great classic.
Frank McCourt's Memoir focuses on his childhood living in Ireland during the 1930s. His father drinks away the dole money and has Frank and his brothers swearing to die for Ireland every night, because of this, the McCourts live in poverty living on borrowed time and money and the goodness of the St. Vincent de Paul. His mother Angela, for which the book is named, despite dire circumstances stays with her husband in spite of his faults. Even though, he must deal with the aftermath of his father's drunken consequences losing siblings to the damp of Ireland and doing nothing short of begging for milk and bread while also being thrifty with the monies they are able to save. Even though Frank McCourt's childhood was filled with trials and tribulation he managed to stand up on his own two feet and write with humor and wit so the reader never felt sorry for him.
I first read Angela's Ashes soon after it came out and was incredibly moved by it and at the time I had never read anything like it. I reread it recently and sadly was not as impressed as I had previously been. I think this is because in the past 10+ years since its publication numerous memoirs have come out i.e. The Glass Castle saturating the market making Frank McCourt's break through novel passe. This time, I felt that his voice was almost detached from the story with a very matter of fact tone and for whatever reason wasn't as captivating. Angela's Ashes was still a fabulous book but just didn't hold the same spark as it had before.
Reading updates
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2 June, 2011:
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2 June, 2011:
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