Product Description

"When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived 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. People everywhere brag or whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying shcoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years. Above all we were wet!" So begins Frank McCourt's stunning memoir of his childhood in Ireland and America, a recollection of unvarnished truth and no self pity, of grinding poverty and indomitable spirit that will live in the memory long after the tape has ended. Now a major film directed by Alan Parker and starring Robert Carlyle and Emily Watson.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #105649 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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 clichés 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 of a compelling memoir.

Review
"Frank McCourt's gentle, understated voice throws into relief the admirable humour, spirit and humanity of the people who made the degradation of his childhood bearable." Gramophone 1/11/97 "It was Frank McCourt's year and his reading of Angela's Ashes on audio tape is the best reason I can think of for taking a long car journey." Irish Times 25/12/97 "Frank McCourt's reading is captivating from the first moment. Felicitous writing and harsh voicing combine to make an apparently dismal story absolutely hilarious." Evening Standard 22/12/97

Evening Standard
'McCourt’s reading is captivating from the first moment.'

Customer Reviews

Childhood ashes
It was amazing to fin a book in a brand new book shop in a brand new shopping mall in the Middle East... to find a book with nice covers, sad covers, brown covers, with a small boy leaning against a wall... somehow, I felt the need to grab it and read it, it looked so European that I could not refuse this pleasure to myself. But AFTER readng it, I was simply amazed... it is so sad that you just hope it was just a story... except that you read on the front page that the book is dedicated to Frank McCourt's brothers, who carry the names from the book, and THEN you get the whole poit... it is completely and emptying true. It is all about a child's view on his own childhood... pertinent and intellingent and full of refined humour... you really do not know whether the garndmother is heartless or just the funniest character ever... you could not say whether the father is to be hated or accepted and even liked (he is a drunk, inded, but he is a nice one, somehow)... and who could tell if Angela herself is a good mother (she cries in despair for her children) or she just neglects them and lets them be dirty and smelly... the characters are strongly individualised, you just love each and every one of them.
In a nhutshell... i offered this book as a Crhristmas present to one of my best friends... she loves it and now it is her favourite... I still have a few more pages to read, and I have a feeling that I will always, but always remember details of this book. Recommendation? Read this book alone, isolated by the world... you will get into it like never before with a book.

Cathartic - Cathartic -Cathartic. Amen.
Dear Frank, your book Angela's Ashes is the book I intended to write, but never had the "guts" to tackle. Like you, I lived my early years in desperate and unrelenting poverty in Englands equivalent of Limerick - Catholic Widnes. Every word, sentence, and paragragh described my childhood so unerringly that as I read I felt as though I was locked in discussion with you. Which in truth I was, inasmuch as I found myself crying and angrily exclaiming in agreement as page after page told "my story". Cathartic - Cathartic. Thank you for proving that human spirit can rise above and triumph over poverty and degradation imposed through the sacraments of manic religious indoctrinators. Just how long are the starving children of this world expected to accept near death in this life for a reward from God if, and when they reach heaven? My intended version would not match yours for humour, because I just couldn't recall much that was humourous about those times. Your version was a revelation to me and caused me for the first time ever, to consider forgiving my sworn enemies the Catholic Church and it's teachers, and to get on with and enjoy whatever time is left to me. I close by telling you that, through reading your books my family have at last gained some insight into what "ails me".

Thank you.

A never to be forgotten story.
Much praise for this book, and the movie is even better. Well done to frank mccourt for finding the words..