Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #260393 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The sequel to Frank McCourt's memoir of his Irish Catholic boyhood, Angela's Ashes, picks up the story in October 1949 upon his arrival in America. Though he was born in New York, the family had returned to Ireland due to poor prospects in the United States. Now back on American soil, this awkward 19-year-old, with his "pimply face, sore eyes, and bad teeth," has little in common with the healthy, self-assured college students he sees on the subway and dreams of joining in the classroom. Initially, his American experience is as harrowing as his impoverished youth in Ireland, including two of the grimmest Christmases ever described in literature. McCourt views the U.S. through the same sharp eye and dark humour that distinguished his first memoir; race prejudice, casual cruelty and dead-end jobs weigh on his spirits as he searches for a way out. A glimpse of hope comes from the army, where he acquires some white-collar skills, and from New York University, which admits him without a high school diploma. But the journey toward his position teaching creative writing at Stuyvesant High School is neither quick nor easy. Fortunately, McCourt's openness to every variety of human emotion and longing remains exceptional; even the most damaged, difficult people he encounters are richly rendered individuals with whom the reader can't help but feel uncomfortable kinship. The magical prose, with its singing Irish cadences, brings grandeur and beauty to the most sorrowful events, including the final scene, in which Angela's ashes are scattered over a Limerick graveyard. --Wendy Smith

Synopsis
From the author of the million-selling Angela's Ashes -- the most keenly anticipated sequel of the decade. Angela's Ashes was a publishing phenomenon. Frank McCourt's critically acclaimed, lyrical memoir of his Limerick childhood won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics' Circle Award, the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Los Angeles Times Award amongst others, and rapidly became a word-of-mouth bestseller topping all charts worldwide for over two years. It left readers and critics alike eager to hear more about Frank McCourt's incredible, poignant life. 'Tis is the story of Frank's American journey from impoverished immigrant with rotten teeth, infected eyes and no formal education to brilliant raconteur and schoolteacher. Saved first by a straying priest, then by the Democratic party, then by the United States Army, then by New York University -- which admitted him on a trial basis though he had no high school diploma -- Frank had the same vulnerable but invincible spirit at nineteen that he had at eight and still has today. And 'Tis is a tale of survival as vivid, harrowing, and often hilarious as Angela's Ashes.

Yet again, it is through the power of storytelling that Frank finds a life for himself. 'It is only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he leaves them wanting more when he's done...McCourt proves himself one of the very best' (Newsweek). 'Tis blesses readers with another chapter of McCourt's story, but as it closes, they will want still more.

From the Publisher
Reviews for 'Tis
''Tis feels like a friend, telling the tales of his life over a pint, with charm and humour, economy and pace. There is a sense of loss when you have to close the pages and sleep, or go on to other things. McCourt is a masterful writer... All who read Angela's Ashes will read 'Tis. The will love and, and so did I.' --Independent on Sunday

'Few will be able to resist this pacey and fluid sequel... In post-war New York, McCourt moves through work as a longshoreman, a spell in the army, to night-school, to become a creative writing teacher encouraging his kids to "write about what you know" - the same policy that has led him to belated international celebrity...McCourt's gift lies not simply in having lived through interesting times, but having developed his skills as an editor and narrator to produce two fine, funny and moving slices of a past that is not simply Ireland's, but everyone's.' --Guardian

'Every page contains an unforced laugh...The gloom is indivisible from moments of great joy and compassion - the sound of jazz pouring form a club, the comforting arm of a fellow worker - which McCourt is able to express in his fresh and supple prose. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, McCourt has the power to transform even the saddest recollections into sentences of great beauty, and in that beauty lies the possibility of salvation.' -- Mail on Sunday

'Full of the narrative brio, the fierce sympathy for human tic and torment, the intuitive feel for character and above all the love of language that made Angela's Ashes a success.' -- LA Times

Customer Reviews

ACTUALLY.... `TIS NOT....
I hate when someone writes a book about their childhood, and does well, and then they come back and try to do it all again. This in no way measured up to angela`s ashes, and i had a hard time trying to figure out what the actual point of this book was. Thumbs down.

Moving Forward.
Having just read this for a second time, I wish I could revise my star rating to 4. This time around, I read it in direct sequence to re-reading Frank McCourt's first memoir,'Angela's Ashes' and I do think this is how it's best read. Although each book does stand alone, reading them as you would read an onmibus edition gives much greater satisfaction; as you progress through 'Tis, the author's character grows and matures and the reader is able to compare the man with the boy. The American Dream doesn't come easily to Frank, but his personal courage and amazing ability to deal with adversity - learned behaviours from childhood, stand him in good stead. And his adult observations are as amusing as those of his childhood. The title of the first book is what ends this memoir -put the two together and we have a remarkable story.

Rubbish
Rubbish