Angela's Ashes

Customer Reviews

• Hope Inspiring  Sep 21, 2000 (58 of 59 found this helpful)

  Angela's Ashes is a book so filled with remorse and sadness, it's amazing that the reader somehow finds themself completely and joyfully satisfied. The novel revolves around the penniless childhood of Frank McCourt and begins in America with four-year-old Frank and his three year-old brother Malachy, who bears the same name as his father, and the infant twins, Eugene and Oliver, and the memories of the baby Margaret, "already dead and gone." Your heart goes out to the poor family, blessed with a loving mother, Angela, and yet cursed with a father who means well, but is constantly drunk or yearning for the "pint," as they call it. Early in his life, McCourt's family moves to Ireland, with help from his aunts and grandmother. Unfortunately, money is not easily found in Ireland either, and the McCourt family migrates from home to home, barely surviving on the few shillings Malachy McCourt doesn't spend at the local pub. The McCourts experience tragedy upon tragedy. His physical romance with a young lady named Theresa Carmody sick with consumption, his unfortunate habit to "interfere with himself," and the sad moment when in a drunken stupor on his first pint he strikes his own mother causes Frank to fear he is doomed to an eternity in hell. Unbelievably, despite all of the terrible things that happen in Frank's childhood, there are moments described in the book that give the reader a complete sense of joy and hope. I immensely enjoyed this memoir and would recommend it to any reader. I was especially enamored of the style of writing in which Frank McCourt chose to write. The words seemed as if they gently tumbled directly out of the mouth of the seven-year-old Frankie, or mischievously flew from Frank as an thirteen-year-old "working man." This novel was exquisitely written and is a jewel to read, as well as a treasure to remember.

• Angela's Ashes  Oct 18, 2000 (21 of 21 found this helpful)

  This has to be one of the best books I've read in a LONG time. It was refreshing to find a book that could keep my wandering mind and High School attention span in check. The trials of the Mc Court family were nothing to laugh at but I often found myself trying very hard to surppres laughter while reading in a classroom where you could easily hear a pin drop. The humerous sections were not based around the events that were taking place, but more around how Frank, as a child, viewed what was going on. The McCourt children knew very little of life and death. What they did know was taught to them by their drunken father and manic depressive mother. Frank seemed to have a slight grasp on the idea that once his younger siblings died he would never see them again, yet he still had many innocent questions. At a very young age Frank was questioning how death happened. He saw a dog get hit by a car and bleed to death. Later on he made another child bleed on the playground. Thinking that blood was death after seeing the dog die from it, Frank feared that he had killed his friend when in all actuality it was a minor injury. Later on in the novel when others take ill and die Frank questions why there was no blood and yet they died. The lack of knowledge and simple questions that Frank had as a child added a great deal to the novel. It was almost depressing when I realized that he would never get those questions answered and just keep wondering. While reading I found myself often forgetting that this was a true story and wondering how an author could come up with a plot line with this many twists and turns. All in all I LOVED this book. It earned each and every one of the five stars not only because it kept my attention for longer than humanly possibly, but because of the way McCourt took tragic events and somehow made the reader believe that for a split second something comical was going on.

• PHEW!  Nov 30, 1999 (17 of 17 found this helpful)

  What a ride! You'll laugh, cry, exhilarate, and despair-all on the same page. Trapped in a childhood of extreme poverty in Limerick, Ireland, Frank McCourt not only survives but thoroughly conquers. In the depths of even this much misery, however, there are small mercies and kindnesses and they are not lost on him. This is what gives the book it's humanity-the ability to withstand horrific circumstances through humor, determination, and forgiveness-and triumph with soul intact. And the people! They seem more alive in ink than most of us seem in flesh.

• Mesmerizing  Jul 11, 2000 (38 of 44 found this helpful)

  Frank McCourt piles on so many examples of the overwhelming poverty he experienced during his childhood that I almost put down the book in despair after reading just forty pages. I'm glad that I didn't.

  Despite the misery of his childhood, McCourt's memoir includes a number of lively and humorous vignettes. Two of my favorites are his the account of his attempts at Irish dancing, and the hilarious description of Frank's ill-fated first Communion.

  Nevertheless, McCourt does not mask his anger at the institutions that failed him and his dyfunctional family. School teachers (with one exception) were uninspiring, church people shut the door in his face or expected the poor to grovel for handouts, government officials lacked empathy.

  McCourt doesn't fall into the trap of over-generalization, though. Most people, despite their flaws, have their redeeming qualities in McCourt's account. Most notably, his hard-drinking, criminally irresponsible father also told beautiful stories, regaling Frank with tales of Irish heroes. No hero himself, McCourt's father passed his gift for telling an enthralling story to his son.

• A Magical Book  Dec 7, 1999 (14 of 14 found this helpful)

  Like some reviewers, I found it hard to get past the initial extreme emphasis on poverty. However, poverty is not the point. Hope is the point. Reading this book can be a harrowing experience at times, but is ultimately a joyful one. Anyone who came away from this book with a sense of dread missed the point. The story may be sad, but Mr. McCourt writes it with such beauty and forgiveness that it is a cause for celebration.