Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
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Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Editorial Reviews:
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"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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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Depressing - Those Poor Children
Comment: I read this story for a book club, and that sense of accountability was the main reason that I finished it.
The McCourt family's life did not have to be so bad, and the children did not have to be malnourished.
I know we have no right to judge others, but how could the parents keep spending what little they had on alcohol and cigarettes and give the babies sugar water to quiet them when they were hungry? Didn't the children deserve some kind of priority? Didn't this constitute child neglect?
Some of the children did make it, but oh, things didn't have to be that bad.
I must say, this book was depressing. Although, more power to the author for ending up alright despite his childhood impoverishment and neglect.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Trust Me
Comment: I was loaned this book by a friend. He told me just to "trust him" and read it. I was hesitant and wasn't sure if I would like this book, but now you can "trust me". If you have any interest at all in Ireland, culture, sociology, or that particular time period you will love this insightful memoir. This book will stay with you, and after only a dozen pages you will be hooked and unable to put it down.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Solid, but could have been great
Comment: The basic problem with it is that while McCourt's life of poverty in Ireland is interesting and there are a couple of dozen well written passages and anecdotes, the work is atrociously edited. All the more galling for the lack of good editing is that this was McCourt's first book- he needed the help. The book is about 450 pages long and the 1st 300 pages deal with his first 6 or so years of growing up. We get the same images of infant death, Irish blarney, drunken dad, suffering mom, stalwart Frankie, and colorful Eriniana. The problem is that early childhood is necessarily the least interesting part of a life because a) the percentage of real memories per year is very low and b) the remembered is rarely cogitated upon enough to produce any coherent thesis of its import or meaning to a life.
At describing these things McCourt is excellent. The scene of him and his brother getting bananas from a vendor in Brooklyn and his mom thinking he stole them is excellent, BUT such only works its charms once. After about 50 pages we get the idea already: McCourt's early life was bleak- it's as if he wants us to really, really know he suffered. The opening page or so at first read seems to poke fun at the Irish habit of bemoaning their woes, but it quickly becomes apparent that McCourt intended no irony in its felicitous prose. He truly wants the reader to know the Irish suffering is on par with that of Jews, blacks, and American Indians. By going on for 300 pages with this the reader starts to turn off about a third of the way though, then skimming between the Godotvian feeling anecdotes of misery.
Things only pick up when Frank reaches his teens- he gets various employment, has a falling out with his mom and her lover, rues his dad's departure, loses his virginity to a consumptive girl who dies, then heads off for America. There are many moving images and wonderfully non-stereotyped characters. The scenes with his tubercular lover are priceless, yet their whole affair is accorded a mere couple of pages vis-à-vis the dozens allotted the repetitious sufferings. A good editor would have told McCourt he had an intriguing 1st draft, but told him to cut the early years down to 100 pages, and double the teen tales to 300 pages. That 400 page edition of AA would have deserved all the acclaim the canonical edition has, while also being over 10% leaner.
This is the main reason why the film version of the book is actually better than the written version. That said, it's far from a great film, but it more judiciously accords the interesting portions of McCourt's life, with about ½ the film on the early years, and the rest on the teen years. As a writer I've often said that the poor practices of editors, publishers, and critics have had a disproportionately deleterious effect on contemporary literature. A bad editor either does not realize a gem that falls in their lap, passes on it, or butchers it, or they get a diamond in the rough, like AA, but have not the sense nor insight to demand the necessary revisions. Toni Morrison has made a career out of having her ill-edited novels published. Yes, she's gotten acclaim, but once dead her trip to the canon will be fruitless because the poor editing of her work will become ok to speak of. But, McCourt was not Morrison- he was a first time author- his editor should have done a better job.
Customer Rating:
Summary: ANGELA'S ASHES By Frank McCourt
Comment: July 1999.
That summer was blistering hot and full of anticipation. Waiting for my beautiful son to arrive into our arms from Korea.
I had just finished up working full time in a children's Day Treatment program. I wanted the summer to "nest"...
to prepare for my son's arrival.
I spent the past two years of my social work career, day after day, listening to the stories of children.
Suffering.
And when permitted the children would allow me to enter their world and join them on their healing journey.
This work provided the daily miracles that can so easily be missed in any other setting.
Kids laugh, they pull pranks, they love to open gifts, they are still just kids in spite of the worst that humanity can toss at them.
Not even three weeks out from this counseling job, I picked up Angela's Ashes.
I don't know why... I just did.
In Frank McCourt's book, I found comfort. I found that optimism grows like a lotus flower out of the mud. I found the voice of an angel in the poverty stricken dirty streets of Limerick. I found the voices of all those kids who spilled their secrets behind my closed office door... lightening their load while I tried my best to make their world better... one kid at a time.
Frank McCourt is a ruddy angel with an acerbic wit and a gift for seeing things as they truly are.
I love ruddy angels.
This is a book that needs to be on everyone's to read list.
Yes, it is that good.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Loved it, loved it, loved it.
Comment: McCourt's child protagonist and his over-riding optimism, his natural-born inclination to make the best of things, makes an otherwise grim tale not only bearable but uplifting and heroic. Despite the daily, brutal grind of poverty, this child still manages to experience, wallow in, simple joys. Due to McCourt's honest voice, I felt every one of this kid's untidy, conflicted emotions. I LOVED this kid.
But after reading some of the criticism here, I think some people forget that this is first and foremost a MEMOIR. Memoirs are subjective by nature. So if McCourt's personal experience shows prejudice toward the Catholic Church, or if he seems to present a "stereotype" of the drunken, morose, Irish----that's HIS viewpoint----naturally. If you want a more balanced view don't read memoirs! Read academia! (It's like reading an autobiography of a politician and complaining that it's too political).
I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who loves to read. The naysayers included. It's not a pretty story, but it IS heroic.
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