Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
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Book Reviews of Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
Book Review: Get Off Yer Arses and Read It
Summary: 5 Stars
This book was great. McCourt really takes you to Limerick as good as anyone could. Some Pulitzer winning books are a bit stuffy but this one great all the way through.Book Review: Captures Readers from the Very Beginning
Summary: 5 Stars
This book will grab readers from the first page. Picked it up at an airport and couldn't put it down. It definitely makes you rethink about what's important in life.Book Review: A Miserable Irish Experience but a Wonderful Joy to Read
Summary: 5 Stars
Outstanding work. Sad, but somehow uplifting and funny. If there is one book to read about a poor Irish family this is it.Book Review: Engaging read, surprisingly uplifting
Summary: 4 Stars
Frank McCourt chronicles the story of his life in the streets of Ireland, his family living a life of poverty and hard luck. Somehow, he is able to make what should be a bleak story uplifting with his wit, humor and straight-forward approach to telling a story. Sometimes he gives you TOO much of the story, things you would rather not have heard--but I guess this is because it is a memoir. There is a certain amount of haphazardness to his writings...there are many times where you have no clue where this is going. But, at other times, there is an effort to be sentimental about the few things he has in life, or the hope of better days ahead.
An interesting style McCourt uses to write the book, where he virtually uses no punctuation during the many dialogue scenes. He also has many, many run-on, wordy, and obtuse sentences that would probably have one of his master's in school up in arms. It took me awhile to get used to this "rambling" kind of style, and, as an English major, it almost had ME up in arms, but actually, after reading the book, the pace of book quickens because of this style. There was enough of a compelling and engaging story to care too much about punctuation, or lack thereof.
As far as content itself, McCourt's story was highly entertaining and somewhat touching. While the young Frank is at school, he meets one strict school master after another, and he deals with the peer pressure from some of his classmates. The young Frank tries to keep all of the disappointments and failures and embarrassments behind him by reminding himself that one day things will change for him in America. There are times when Frank goes to the library to escape the world, knowing that he can escape into a story: "It's lovely to know that the world can't interfere with the inside of your head." Frank also experiences some time in the hospital with fever and eye problems, and in his first visit he meets Patricia, a girl who teaches him poetry. When he gets separated from her for talking to her, it is one of Frank's saddest moments: "Nurses and nuns never think you know what they're talking about...You can't ask questions. You can't show you understand what the nurse said about Patricia Madigan, that she's going to die, and you can't show you want to cry over this girl who taught you a lovely poem which the nun says is bad." Frank also deals with the trials of being in a family with an alcoholic father who rarely comes up, spends up the family's earnings, and some other dysfunctional relatives. He keeps hope that one day things will change for the better.
While the story is highly engaging, one thing that irked me was the abruptness of the ending. Without giving too much away, the memoir just seemingly ends without any deep moment or thought. The incident with Frank and the woman--- is that suppose to be some momentous or life-changing event? It seemed kind of stupid to end the book right there. It also made the book seem a little uneven; after all, here is Frank preaching about how he wants to help his family in the future, and then what does he go and do in the book's conclusion?
Criticism aside, this is an enjoyable read, which I honestly didn't think would be possible based on what I had heard about the story. McCourt is able to intertwine humor and heart-break in a way I've never seen done before.
Book Review: Angela's Ashes
Summary: 4 Stars
Even at the worst of times people are able to hope for the better.
In the memoir Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, the McCourt family truly hopes for the better at the worst of times. Surrounding himself in poverty, Frank is born in Brooklyn, New York, moving to Limerick, Ireland at an early age, in the 1930s and 1940s. Only by the age of ten, Frank is soon immersed in a life with death, a father who drinks money away, and brought to the attention that he should die for Ireland. Even through the hard times, the impoverished McCourt Family's spirits remain strong.
Frank is absorbed in a life of hunger, sickness, neglect, and a father's alcoholism, "I know when my Dad does the bad thing. I know when he drinks the dole money, and Mam is desperate and has to bed at the St. Vincent de Paul Society and ask for credit at Kathleen O'Connell's shop but I don't want to back away from him and run to Mam. How can I do that when I'm up with him early every morning with the whole world asleep?"(208). All those effects characterize his reasons to escape from Ireland and rise from poverty.
Frank McCourt's writing and story truly changes your view and melts your heart. With its unique charm it entrances you within. It is narrated in first person, present tense, McCourt writes as he is experiencing it for the first time. It truly captivates you as a reader as it is told by Frank as a child, rather than reflecting on his past as an adult. With having it in immediate past it allows for the true culture of the time to come out. Religion and Irish sayings are used to convey how people really talked during his childhood. The author's tone is different from what you would expect. He writes in a style in which he states ideas as they are happening, which matches the tone as McCourt as a child.
I really enjoyed reading this book. This is the first time I have read a memoir about this time period, in Ireland, and it certainly encourages me to read further. Being of Irish decent, I appreciate how the author let the reader see how life was in Ireland. Reading it from Frank's point of view as a child made me further understand the life style he had and made me appreciate it even more. The reader learns the culture of that time period through Irish phrases and the use of the reoccurring appearances of religious aspects.
This memoir was a great read that in truly enjoyed. It teaches the reader that even with harsh times one can make the best of it and hope for the better. "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."(11)