Angela's Ashes

A book review.

Angela's Ashes

by Frank McCourt

published: 1997/09/01

ISBN: 068484267X

genre: Autobiography

reviewed:1999.07.05

👍🏼 recommended

 

This book was recommended to us by the guide (Phaidrick Tynen) who took my girlfriend and me on a walking tour of Kilkenny, Ireland. Having spent only two weeks in that country, I came to find a wonderful counterpart in this book - I probably learned more of the land from this book than my time there.

Angela's Ashes, written by Francis "Frank" McCourt, an account of the author's dismal childhood, first in the slums of Brooklyn, then in the unspeakably grinding poverty of Limerick.

McCourt's childhood was one studded with the deaths of siblings, friends, and family. It was frequented by the illness that squalid living conditions engenders: McCourt himself had a bout of Typhoid, and lived with chronic conjunctivitis.

Throughout the story, the author's father staggers through life in an alcoholic's cycle of oblivion and guilt-ridden dignity, preferring to spend most of his time on 'long walks in the country' and singing down at the pub. His mother bitterly makes her way from one charity organization to another, finding work when she can, and begging when she must. As a young mother, she bears some seven children, only to lose three to the poverty of their life: McCourt hints that at least one of the lost children starves to death soon after the family returns to Ireland. All the while, Frank and his siblings make do as the can, bouncing from the lanes and lots of the dismal industrial city to the churches, schools, and youth organizations that tug them this way and that.

It's hard to imagine the years of shoeless, filthy hunger that the McCourts endured, but even more incredible is the author's steady, sorrowless depiction of those years. The story follows the growing boy to adulthood, depicting the path that takes him back the land of his birth, and the many shocking turns that the road presents. Despite the routine horrors of his childhood, McCourt's tone is one of humour and forthright honesty. It is this level directness and the author's brilliant prose that pulls you into this story, unable to put it from your mind.

The story is littered with deadly accurate insights into the mechanisms of society: class, Church, charity, and especially family. It is an absolutely heart-breaking story, and pulls no punches. McCourt confesses his sins, his crimes, and his very heart in this memoir.

I strongly recommend this book. It is probably the most moving and memorable thing I've read. I treasure this story.

Notes

Since I've read this book, I've learned that Frank McCourt's brother Malachy has also published a story of his life. Unlike Angela's Ashes, the younger brother's story (A Monk Swimming) begins with the author's arrival in New York. I've just tackled the latter.

The movie isn't as good as the book - how could it be? In fact, I doubt that someone who hadn't read the book would get much from the novel. Kinda like comparing Into Thin Air to the IMAX movie Everest

Here are some interesting links I found on the book.

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