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Angela's Ashes

Book 1 in the series:Frank McCourt

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Angela's Ashes is a powerful memoir by Frank McCourt that delves into his childhood growing up in poverty in Limerick, Ireland. The book vividly portrays the struggles faced by the McCourt family, including extreme poverty, alcoholism, and loss of siblings. Despite the bleak circumstances, McCourt's writing style combines humor with tragedy, offering a poignant and emotional account of his upbringing.

The narrative follows Frank McCourt from his boyhood to his late teens, chronicling the hardships and adversities he faced while highlighting moments of resilience and hope. Through McCourt's honest and raw storytelling, readers are immersed in the bleak yet sometimes hopeful world of a poverty-stricken Irish family, offering a unique perspective on survival, family dynamics, and the impact of poverty on childhood.

Writing/Prose:

The writing style features a unique, unpunctuated narrative that conveys the child's perspective and incorporates humor amidst the sobering realities of life.

Plot/Storyline:

The plot traces Frank McCourt's challenging childhood, highlighting his family's struggle with poverty and the impact of his father's alcoholism, interspersed with humor and relativity to the human experience.

Setting:

The setting reveals the stark contrasts of early 20th-century Ireland, marked by poverty and the struggles of the working class.

Pacing:

The pacing oscillates between contemplative reflection and the urgency of daily struggles, mirroring the fluctuating nature of the family's life.
My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four, my brother, Malachy, three, the twins, Oliver an...

Notes:

Frank McCourt was born in New York City but returned to Ireland with his family at a young age.
The memoir describes extreme poverty, with the family often going hungry.
McCourt's father, Malachy, was an alcoholic who squandered his earnings on drinks instead of supporting the family.
Frank's mother, Angela, often begged for food to feed her children.
Several of Frank's siblings died from illness and malnutrition during his childhood.
Despite the bleak circumstances, McCourt narrates his story with humor and warmth.
The book spans from Frank's early childhood in New York to his youth in Limerick during the pre and post WWII period.
McCourt captures the voice of childhood remarkably well, using a unique writing style often free of punctuation for dialogue.
Angela's Ashes won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and Autobiography in 1997.
The book exposes the struggles against the rigid Catholic upbringing and the social prejudices of the time.
Frank McCourt eventually escaped to America, where he pursued a successful writing career.

Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings

Content warnings include themes of poverty, alcoholism, child neglect, death, and discussions of childhood trauma which may be distressing.

From The Publisher:

A Pulitzer Prize-winning, #1 New York Times bestseller, Angela's Ashes is Frank McCourt's masterful memoir of his childhood in Ireland.

"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.

Ratings (87)

Incredible (14)
Loved It (43)
Liked It (19)
It Was OK (7)
Did Not Like (4)

Reader Stats (143):

Read It (89)
Currently Reading (1)
Want To Read (37)
Did Not Finish (2)
Not Interested (14)

2 comment(s)

Loved It
1 week

Well this was depressing and heartbreaking, need to cuddle up with a teddy bear and chocolate after this... But it didn't change the fact that I found this book to be very interesting and fascinating, to be able to see how horrid people can have in the childhood yet rise from it.

 
Loved It
3 months

Wonderful memoir about growing up impoverished in Ireland and then immigrating to the US

 

About the Author:

Frank McCourt (1930-2009) was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, grew up in Limerick, Ireland, and returned to America in 1949. For thirty years he taught in New York City high schools. His first book, Angela's Ashes, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. In 2006, he won the prestigious Ellis Island Family Heritage Award for Exemplary Service in the Field of the Arts and the United Federation of Teachers John Dewey Award for Excellence in Education.

 
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