Genealogy Books - Angela's Ashes

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Summary: Review of Angela's Ashes
Comment: I liked this book because it was real and didn't hold back on the reality even though it was too
harsh to believe. It is hard to believe people actually lived this way.
The way this family
dealt with what they were given goes to show people that you can get through anything if you just
keep going. People aren't always going to give you something when you ask for it. Sometimes you
just have to take what you need in order to survive. Frankie wasn't afraid to assume the role of
father when his father left. He may have been scared, but he did what he had to do because
otherwise his family wouldn't have survived. Even though his eye infection was bad, he kept working
because his family needed the money.
The times when he was forced to the brink of anger and
hatred for certain people and he couldn't hold it in because he couldn't bare to see his family
treated like that, he still went to confession after because he still wanted to be a good boy, he
just had to make some tough decisions.
The fact that he never truly lost his dignity, but
still wasn't so hard-headed as to be too stuck-up as to put his family in danger made him mature
faster than any boy his age.
He didn't just not care about the bad things he did and he didn't
make excuses that his life was hard and that was why he did those things, but he still felt guilt
and that his life wasn't so bad to the point that he couldn't still try to be respectful of the
world and people around him.
Despite the fact that life only seemed to hand them poverty and
nothing went well for them in the end, they still tried to be something. Frankie never gave up on
his dream of going to America even though they were extremely poor. They made their own good
fortune and luck.
Sara, Sandia Prep

Customer Rating:

Summary: Haunting and Powerful
Comment: I first heard of this book while on a tour of Ireland. We drove past the street in Limerick where
most of the story takes place. This sad story makes the horrors of extreme poverty real for the
reader. Hard to believe that Frank Mccourt was able to survive his childhood. The story will stay
with you for a very long time.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Superb
Comment: McCourt's childhood memoirs make for a superb read. A number of people are greatly saddened by the
abhorrent conditions in which McCourt, his family, and many, many others had to suvive. Alcoholic
father unable to hold down a job, abject poverty, deplorable living conditions, mother doing
everything she can to put food on the table and limited clothes on their backs, death of siblings,
church washing its hands of them to avoid embarassment, begging for food, just the daily struggle in
mind numbing poverty. Through it all the telling of the bigger story: the strength of humanity in
the face of adversity. And here is where McCourt delivers...even in the most desparate of situations
the will to struggle on wins the day (people are facing these conditions, and much worse, elsewhere
in the world today)...through it all there is the ability to draw from the well of humour,
companionship, and pure bloody mindedness.
If you are shocked, stunned, depressed by what
MCCourt relates then I'd recommend you go and visit some of the Third World countries - McCourts
story is their reality.
A wonderfully written book. Is it all true? Having spoken with someone
that knows him personally then No - hence it being labelled memoirs. Does that detract from it being
a good read? No. Pay heed to the circumstances of poverty and squalor that the book relates but most
importantly take a leaf from McCourt and laugh.
A superb book.

Customer Rating:

Summary: A tough and gloomy poverty- stricken Irish childhood told in authentic language
Comment: The first one - hundred pages of this memoir tell of Frank McCourt's first years in New York. They
tell of his two tough aunts forcing his less than responsible - father to marry their mother. The
sainted Irish mother Angela suffers through the incredible failure of her husband to provide for her
and the children. McCourt is a master of retelling situations in the language of the time and people
. On Clausen Street in Brooklyn in their cold-water flat his mother struggles to raise him, his
younger brothers Malachy, and younger twin-brothers and little sister- Margeret. The deaths of the
little girl in America send the dismayed father and family back to Ireland . But his own parents
have no room for him.
And the saga of misery continues in wet and cold Limerick. There the
twins die, and two more children are born. And the story of the irresponsible father preaching Irish
Nationalism, singing and dreaming to his sons but providing nothing for the table of the family,
continues.
This is a hard- knocks story and is told with a hard- edged authenticity. />The book has been a tremendously popular one. I think I understand why because the sense of
hardship and the sound of the language seem real. But in truth the tale of misery and suffering was
for me a gloomy one, and the book thus a far less enjoyable read than I thought it would be.

Customer Rating:

Summary: The past is ever present
Comment: Angela's Ashes gives you a deep and haunting look into the author as a child and shows how he
perceived his habitus. It is a story in which it seems the only medicine for the suffering is to be
found in the giving and taking of lashings of wit. The wit seems be the coping mechanism. Angela's
Ashes may give you a glimpse into an Irish soul. If you are Irish and are of the same generation as
the author it could possibly make you feel young again. The past is ever present in this fantastic
book.

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