Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
Ratings159
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings159
Average rating3.8
"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 immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. in the 1930s and 40s. 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. - Jacket flap.
Featured Series
3 primary booksFrank McCourt is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 1996 with contributions by Frank McCourt.
Reviews with the most likes.
This was a very sad story about Frank McCourt and his family living in extreme poverty. He tells about his dad and how he would take any money he got and go drink it away while the family starved at home. The family went through many difficult times, including the deaths of several of their children. It was difficult to read about the children starving and living in such filthy conditions. Frank tells about how his father told him stories and songs and I can tell he loved his father despite his failings. Now I want to look up the next book to read more about the life of Frank McCourt after he reaches America.
“At night I lie in bed thinking about Tom Brown and his adventures at Rugby School and all the characters in P.G. Wodehouse. I can dream about the red-lipped landlord's daughter and the highwayman, and the nurses and nuns can do nothing about it. It's lovely to know the world can't interfere with the inside of your head.”
“When you look at pictures of Jesus He's always wandering around ancient Israel in a sheet. It never rains there and you never hear of anyone coughing or getting consumption or anything like that and no one has a job there because all they do is stand around and eat manna and shake their fists and go to crucifixions.”
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