Angela's Ashes: A Memoir of a Childhood - Softcover

Frank McCourt; Designer-Brooke Zimmer; Designer-John Fontana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0002571668 ISBN 13: 9780002571661

Publisher: Scribner, 1999

Synopsis

"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. 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.

About this title

Review:

"Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood," writes Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes. "Worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." Welcome, then, to the pinnacle of the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. Born in Brooklyn in 1930 to recent Irish immigrants Malachy and Angela McCourt, Frank grew up in Limerick after his parents returned to Ireland because of poor prospects in America. It turns out that prospects weren't so great back in the old country either--not with Malachy for a father. A chronically unemployed and nearly unemployable alcoholic, he appears to be the model on which many of our more insulting cliches about drunken Irish manhood are based. Mix in abject poverty and frequent death and illness and you have all the makings of a truly difficult early life. Fortunately, in McCourt's able hands it also has all the makings for a compelling memoir.

Review:

"Every once in a while, a lucky reader comes across a book that makes an indelible impression, a book you immediately want to share with everyone around you....Frank McCourt's life, and his searing telling of it, reveal all we need to know about being human." (Linnea Lannon, Detroit Free Press)

"A classic modern memoir...stunning." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)

"A splendid memoir, both funny and forgiving." (People)

"A monument to the self-perpetuating power of the human spirit...an accomplished, authoritative, and shimmering example of the memoirist's art." (Margaria Fichtner, The Miami Herald)

"A spellbinding memoir of childhood that swerves flawlessly between aching sadness and desperate humor...a work of lasting beauty." (Peter Finn, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

"This memoir is an instant classic of the genre...good enough to be the capstone of a distinguished writing career; let's hope it's only the beginning of Frank McCourt's." (Nina King, The Washington Post Book World)

"Frank McCourt's lyrical Irish voice will draw comparisons to Joyce. It's that seductive, that hilarious." (Mary Karr)

"Angela's Ashes is a chronicle of grown-ups at the mercy of life and children at the mercy of grown-ups, and it is such a marriage of pathos and humor that you never know whether to weep or roar -- and find yourself doing both at once. Fear not: it ends happily; but all along, through each fresh horror of the narrative, you win be made happy by some of the most truly marvelous writing you will ever encounter. McCourt deserves whatever glittering prizes are lying around. Give the man a Prix de Rome, a Croix de Guerre, a Pulitzer, a Nobel, a Templeton -- and while you're at it pull him another Guinness!" (Thomas Cahill)

"Irish American Magazine Frank McCourt has examined his ferocious childhood, walked around it, relived it, and with skill and care and generosity of heart, has transformed it into a triumphant work of art. This book will be read when all of us are gone." (Pete Hamill)

"The power of this memoir is that it makes you believe the claim: that despite the rags and hunger and pain, love and strength do come out of misery -- as well as a page-turner of a book. And though the experience it tells of was individual, the point -- and the story -- is universal." (Vanessa V. Friedman Entertainment Weekly)

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0002571668
• ISBN 13: 9780002571661
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256