Angela's Ashes: Amazon.ca: Frank McCourt: Books

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Michiko Kakutani The New York Times The reader of this stunning memoir can only hope that Mr. McCourt will set down the story of his subsequent adventures in America in another book. Angela's Ashes is so good it deserves a sequel.

Malcom Jones, Jr. Newsweek It is only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he leaves them wanting more when he's done. With Angela's Ashes, McCourt proves himself one of the very best.

Book Description

"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.

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My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born. Read the first page

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108 Reviews

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4.8 out of 5 stars (108 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Now I'm in love with Frank McCourt..., Feb 14 2007

By

Wendy Cawte - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Angela's Ashes (Audio CD)

I've never read a book like this, most memoirs/biographies usually come into the room with their egos a foot in front, this one is written from a heart that is tender, decent, unpretentious and loyal. I loved his passionate sense of justice as a small boy, claiming his rights as sole owner of his dad's Cuchulain stories, or was that just jealous possession? When his mum's depressed, you want to hug Frankie and hold his hand because his world's just gone all cold, and the world doesn't get any colder than when your mum's not singing and in the kitchen making a cup of tea. I laughed out loud on all the humerous pages until they were mixed with the sad pages and then I was hit with the real tragedy of little Frankie's and his brothers' lives between downstairs in damp Ireland and upstairs in sunny Italy. Sometimes it was as if he was writing a song, and the chorus was at the end again and again, like all the fiddles coming together in a jig and ending with a jingle of the tambourine. I have so much fondness for this book and Mr McCourt's gentle spirit, and I really hope that one day we can share some laughter in a pub over a couple of pints of Guinness and a ploughman's lunch (crusty bread, cheddar cheese, and pickled onions, no rashers needed).

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5.0 out of 5 stars The Finest Memoir from the Foremost Memoirist of Our Time, Sep 24 2010

By

John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Angela's Ashes (Paperback)

In a time when memoirs became the finest expressions of high literary art, "Angela's Ashes" ascended with alacrity to become the most exalted of them. Its author, Frank McCourt, my beloved Stuyvesant High School creative writing teacher, would be hailed as the foremost memoirist of our time. Many, many years ago I knew Frank's heart-rendering stories of his dismal Irish childhood were the potential stuff of legend. But not once could I ever imagine the worldwide popular and crticial acclaim which greeted the original publication of "Angela's Ashes" nearly thirteen years ago. While I still mourn Frank's passing, I do take great comfort knowing that he touched the lives of so many around the world with both his lyrical prose and spellbinding gift of storytelling.

If you haven't read "Angela's Ashes" before, then I strongly encourage you to do so, for Frank's tale is ultimately a universal tale that is a most memorable meditation on the human spirt, chronicling one man's successful escape from the stark, quite bleak, poverty of his childhood. And that I believe is why "Angela's Ashes" has won its well-deserved legions of fans, not only here in North America, but elsewhere, around the globe.

Elsewhere online I posted this tribute to my favorite high school teacher, and I think it is worth noting here:

I've been fortunate to have had many fine teachers in high school, college and graduate school, but there was no one like Frank McCourt. Without a doubt, he was the most inspirational, most compelling, and the funniest, teacher I ever had. I am still grateful to him for instilling in me a life-long love of literature and a keen interest in writing prose. Am still amazed that he encouraged me to enter a citywide essay contest on New York City's waterfront, and would, more than a year later, in my senior yearbook acknowledge my second prize award by thanking me for winning him money (His was also, not surprisingly, the most eloquent set of comments I had inscribed in my yearbook from teachers.). He is gone now, but I am sure that for me, and for many of my fellow alumni of his Stuyvesant High School classes, he will live in our hearts and minds for the rest of our lives.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Angela's Ashes, July 25 2010

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Paul M (British Columbia) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Angela's Ashes: a Memoir (Paperback)

Excellent portrayal of life as a kid growing up in poverty. Outstanding use of language appropriate to his age.

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