Frank's words filled my
heart with sadness and at times with joy. I found this work to be incredibly enjoyable! It is a
MUST read.

There
are inconsistencies, such as time frames that make no sense, as well as improbabilities, like his
grandmother making several walking round trips of over a mile, all in one night, months before her
death. There is also the issue of whether McCourt could possibly recall such detail (as his lengthy
story about the IRA refusing to helping his father out and why) during his very early years without
any context. It would be as though you were four years old and heard your father talking about the
New Deal, and you remembered everything about it even though you had no idea at the time what all
the acronyms represented. Oddly, while McCourt goes into great detail about his early childhood, his
timeline becomes increasingly compressed as he approaches adolescence. There is much less detail,
and whole months are passed by just at a time when a person would be more likely to remember more --
and to be experiencing more. It almost feels like he grew tired of the tale (and fabricating it) and
was in a rush to get to the end. Or perhaps, having gone through a sleazy conception, rats, fleas,
sewage, open sores, tuberculosis, vomited blood, corporeal punishment,

prolonged hunger, his
mother's prostitution, etc., etc., etc. (no horror goes untouched), he simply ran out of
material.

So, from early on, I viewed Angela's Ashes as a work of fiction in which none of the
characters is likeable. While many would say the father is the worst, as he is a hard-core alcoholic
who cannot and will not support his family, I found him to be far more sympathetic a person than his
mother as portrayed. When sober, the father often shows his sons small signs of affection and
empathy, but Angela herself is nearly always cold, distant, and unsympathetic toward her children.
She is always more focused on herself than on them. I'm not sure how many people could write about
their own mothers as dispassionately as McCourt does. If she had one good quality, McCourt is
careful not to present it.

As a child, McCourt seems relatively balanced, likeable, and ethical,
wanting to do the right thing, but adolescence seems to turn him into a different person. He lies,
he steals, he takes advantage of people -- and the only guilt he seems to feel is that imposed by
the Catholic Church. There is never a sense, even when he achieves adulthood, that he has any deep
thoughts about who he is, what he is doing, and how he affects others. Even his agonizing over his
belief that he is responsible for a consumptive girl's descent into Hell because he had sex with her
is tainted by the selfishness of his focus.

In the end, I must concur with an author acquaintance
who said, "Angela's Ashes? 'tis as phony as the photo on the cover."

But it is certainly well
written and compelling, if you happen to have a large grain of salt handy. Recommended under those
conditions.