Genealogy Books - Angela's Ashes

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Summary: A child's memoir
Comment: "When I looked back on my childhood I wonder how I survived it 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."
It is almost impossible to ignore the strong imagery and personal experiences that
Francis McCourt shares in Angela's Ashes. The story's subject matter concerns a world of poverty
that few readers have experienced, yet they are invited to share McCourt's thoughts and feelings
while growing up in Ireland. It is a memoir that is potent, funny, sad, and yet dignifying. In an
interview, McCourt says "Even though we were poor, at the lowest level, even below the lowest
economic level, we were always excited. It was rich in the sense that we had a lot to look up to, to
look forward to, to aspire to, a lot to dream about. But in economic circumstances it was
desperate."
Frank McCourt is the oldest of seven children - three of whom die at an early age.
Born in New York City in 1931, the book follows his family's move to Limerick, Ireland when he is
three years old. Ireland at this time is immersed in poverty, made only worse in McCourt's case by
an alcoholic father who cannot hold a job and drinks away all of the money received from the dole.
From age three to nineteen, when he leaves for America, McCourt endures a struggle with Protestants,
the English presence in Ireland, strict Catholic school masters, bullying classmates, and the
sickness and death associated with poverty.
Although the events he lives through are dismal,
the impact of the book is not disheartening. It is a memoir written from a child's perspective,
which creates a more personal feeling when reading the book. McCourt tells you everything he is
thinking in a child's words. He describes the experiences the way he felt them when he was a child.
This creates a jovial yet heavy sadness to the book.
Angela's Ashes is a fantastic book that
gives an insight into what it would be like to live in poverty, and how a person could prevail over
it. McCourt survived his childhood through a combination of virtue, hope, luck, and humor. He
faced his obstacles with a child's innocence and conveys this through his perceptive writing. He
won both the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award. When finished
with the book, the reader is grateful to McCourt for sharing the qualities he learned growing up and
inspiring those same qualities in us.

Customer Rating:

Summary: McCourt Delivers Stunning Memoir
Comment: As McCourt recalls, life was never easy. Angela's Ashes proves just that. If you've ever thought
that your life was rough, give this one a try. Every page reveals yet another tragedy that this
young Irish-American must try to understand.
Written from the first-person perspective, the book
begins it's setting in New York where everything is seemingly flawless. However, in an ironic twist,
the aleady Irish immigrants traverse back to their homeland, battling the mobs and mobs of new
immigrants coming to the 'New World'.
Once in Ireland, the McCourt's begin their struggle to live
complacently among their own. Going through many, many decrepit houses, the McCourt family expands
and shrinks like a beating heart. Angela, Frank's mother, has a miscarriage, a daughter that dies, a
son that dies, and twins that both perish as well leaving the family with father, son, and three
brothers.
Malachy McCourt the older, Frank's father, deals with getting a place in the work
force with his "North of Ireland accent", unacceptable to those living in Limerick at the time. When
Malachy does get a job, he spends all of the wages on the dreaded 'pint' and comes home singing
through the streets, waking everyone and disgracing himself in front of the entire
town.
Throughout all, Frank begins schooling, a religous life, sexual experimentation, getting a
job, and finding his place in life. With Frank's unique way of questioning everything, he draws in
the reader and makes it truly believable that a child wrote the book.
With all the trials and
tribulations of Irish life come many valuable lessons which McCourt inserts as prevailing themes.
Angela seems to offer up the most advice to young Frank and the climax of the book seems to come
when she tells him, "never let anyone slam a door in your face again, Frankie." This proves to be a
valiant offering from a woman who begs for food scraps and bits of coal from the church.
With
this, Frank is determined to go back to America where he can live happily among the hardworking,
wealthy, 'cowboys' of the Western world.
This book truly delivers something special into every
reader's heart. It has met praise and unexpected success, "I had no expectations. As I said to my
wife, recently, I might be reviewed in the New York Times Book Review under "Briefly Noted." And
then I'd get my Library of Congress catalog number. And then I'd recede into obscurity and I'd get a
job like everybody else."
This is most certainly untrue. Pick up a copy of Angela's Ashes and the
sequel, 'Tis in a bookstore near you today.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Angela's Ashes wins the crown
Comment: Angela's Ashes is a wonderful book. It will make you laugh, cry and want to give all of your money
away to poor children all at the same time. The book follows Frankie McCourt, a young Irish boy,
through his many houses all of which are barely standing, through his many adventures through the
streets of Limerick, through the deaths of his brothers and sisters, and through all the times
waiting late at night for his father to come home drunk with no money from work and making the boys
stand up and promise to die for Ireland. Frankie is so poor that he has no shoes he's had the same
clothes since he was about three years old. Frankie struggles to survive in the tough streets of
Limerick and earn money for his family. He finally sails to America with hopes of a new life and
prosperity. This book is a masterpiece that will forever be an emotion-provoking novel.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Angela's Ashes takes the crown
Comment: Angela's Ashes is a wonderful book. It will make you laugh, cry and want to give all of your money
away to poor children all at the same time. The book follows Frankie McCourt, a young Irish boy,
through his many houses all of which are barely standing, through his many adventures through the
streets of Limerick, through the deaths of his brothers and sisters, and through all the times
waiting late at night for his father to come home drunk with no money from work and making the boys
stand up and promise to die for Ireland. Frankie is so poor that he has no shoes he's had the same
clothes since he was about three years old. Frankie struggles to survive in the tough streets of
Limerick and earn money for his family. He finally sails to America with hopes of a new life and
prosperity. This book is a masterpiece that will forever be an emotion-provoking novel.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Wonderful
Comment: Angela's Ashes is by far one of the most touching novels you will ever read. Once I picked it up, I
could not put it down. It keeps you on your toes, and you wonder what's going to happen next? It's
innocent and sweet. You see the story through the eyes of young Frank McCourt, where he takes you
through journey's, some sad, some uplifting. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading true
stories that come from the heart.

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