Product Description

A memoir of growing up in New York in the 1930s and in Ireland in the 1940s. McCourt tells of extreme hardship and suffering, in Brooklyn tenements and Limerick slums - too many children, too little money, his mother barely coping as his father's drinking bouts brought the family close to disaster.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #630444 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-01
• Released on: 2007-01-01
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback

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
A powerful, exquisitely written debut, a recollection of the author's miserable childhood in the slums of Limerick, Ireland, during the Depression and WW II. McCourt was born in Brooklyn in 1930 but returned to Ireland with his family at the age of four. He describes, not without humor, scenes of hunger, illness, filth, and deprivation that would have given Dickens pause. His "shiftless loquacious alcoholic father," Malachy, rarely worked; when he did he usually drank his wages, leaving his wife, Angela, to beg from local churches and charity organizations. McCourt remembers his little sister dying in his mother's arms. Then Oliver, one of the twins, got sick and died. McCourt himself nearly died of typhoid fever when he was ten. As awful and neglectful as his father could be, there were also heartrendingly tender moments: Unable to pay for a doctor and fearful of losing yet another child when the youngest is almost suffocating from a cold, his father places "his mouth on the little nose . . . sucking the bad stuff out of Michael's head." Malachy fled to do war work in England but failed to send any money home, leaving his wife and children, already living in squalor, to further fend for themselves. They stole and begged and tore wood from the walls to burn in the stove. Forced to move in with an abusive cousin, McCourt became aware that the man and his mother were having "the excitement" up there in their grubby loft. After taking a beating from the man, McCourt ran away to stay with an uncle and spent his teens alternating between petty crime and odd jobs. Eventually he made his way, once again, to America. An extraordinary work in every way. McCourt magically retrieves love, dignity, and humor from a childhood of hunger, loss, and pain. (Kirkus Reviews)

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..