Angela's Ashes

The best book I've read this year. If Neil Simon were to have written a novel it may have well looked like this book. A unique voice and style applying humor in all of the right ways for a reader to absorb the sad tragedy of growing up poor, Irish, and Catholic during the depression years, in America, and Ireland. Frank McCourt is able to overcome the pathos of his poignant, sad, and often disturbing memoir of growing up as the oldest son of a poor Irish Catholic family, through use of voice. In Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt presents his memoir though the limited first person view of a young boy. He creates comic relief in using the voice of a small child, as he grows up, first in New York, and then in Limerick, Ireland, during the time of the depression, and its aftermath. McCourt presents a tragic account of his family that would generally overwhelm any reader, unless presented through the eyes of a child, who often does not realize the hardship he has undergone, and whose innocent, limited view allows him (and the reader) to keep going. McCourt pushes the reader through the grief of near starvation, the upbringing by an alcoholic father, misguided mother, loss of younger siblings, and the stigma of growing up, poor, Irish, and Catholic, at a time when all three were considered an affliction, like some disease, rather than circumstance. He manages to hold the reader’s interest, without overwhelming her with pathos, by his character’s youthful voice, through artful dialogue, carefully crafted to allow the reader to see the lighter side of his tragic life. His choice of colloquial terms of endearment unique to the Irish of this era, calling his mother “Mam” instead of mom and using “Och” at the start of dialogue summary of the characters who likely had an Irish accent. In the very first paragraph, the author lets the voice of the narrator, pick up the easy ebb and flow of the Irish manner of speaking, and use of the vernacular of an American Irish immigrant, to recall his humble beginnings. “My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland, when I was four, my brother, Malachy, three, the twins, Oliver and Eugene, barely one, and my sister, Margaret, dead and gone.” (McCourt, 11). The reader can almost picture an Irishman speaking as the story begins. McCort introduces comedy into his narrative voice, an older, more mature, man looking back on his life, when he recalls his father:Malachy McCourt, was born on a farm in Toome, County, Antrim.Like his father before, he grew up wild, in trouble with the English, or theIrish, or both. He fought with the Old IRA and for some desperate act hewound up a fugitive with a price on his head. [] When I was a child I wouldlook at my father, the thinning hair, the collapsing teeth, and wonder whyanyone would give money for a head like that. (McCourt, 12)This establishes the comic tone of the story through the voice of the character, recalling through his inner thoughts as a child, later through narrative summary, what he was told by his grandmother when he was thirteen; “as a wee lad, your poor father was dropped on his head. It was an accident, he was never the same after, and you must remember that people dropped on their heads can be a bit peculiar.” (McCourt, 12). This revelation becomes more humorous when the reader reconciles it with the story of how the grandmother’s brother, Patrick “Ab” Sheean, became retarded, after his alcoholic father dropped him on his head, when he was a baby. (McCourt, 13). Living with an alcoholic father, even one that is not necessarily abusive, can be a rather difficult subject matter for any reader to plow through, particularly where his alcoholism leave the family so impoverished that his family is near starvation, while he spends what little money on ale however, McCourt’s use of a limited first person view through a child’s eyes, the reader is given an account that is both tolerable, and sometimes funny. Here the voice of the child character portrays the tragic account of life in an impoverished alcoholic family with both catharsis, and humor. He uses word choices indicative of an Irish child, and through creative use of point of view, and method of speaking like a child, he says: When Dad gets a job Mam is cheerful and she sings, Anyone can see why I wanted your kiss, It had to be and the reason is this Could it be true, that someone like you Could love me, love me?When Dad brings home the first weeks wages, Mam is delighted, she can pay the lovelyItalian man in the grocery shop and she can hold her head up again because there’s nothing worse in the world than to owe and be beholding to anyone. She cleans … she buys … and …on Friday night we know the weekend will be wonderful. … Mam will boil the water on the stove and wash us in the great tin tub and Dad will dry us. Malachy will turn around and show hisbehind. Dad will pretend to be shocked and we’ll all laugh …(but) when Dad’s jobgoes into the third week he does not bring home the wages… we know Mam won’tsing anymore one can see why I wanted your kiss. She sits at the kitchen tabletalking to herself… and Dad rolls up the stairs singing Roddy McCorley.[By the fourth week] Dad loses his job…(McCourt, 23-28).When his new baby sister, Margaret, dies, and his mother shuts down and stares at the wall, the use of a child’s voice enables the reader to somehow cope with the description of neglect of the other small children living in a roach infested apartment, with no food, and having to fend for themselves while their alcoholic father is still out at the pub. Later, when Oliver, one of the twins dies of pneumonia, followed by his brother, Eugene, McCourt’s use of his child’s voice, delivering death of his brothers, and baby sister Margaret into that child’s view that is both tolerable, and hopeful, despite the tears it brings to the reader’s eyes. Malachy and I are back in the bed where Eugene died. I hope he’snot cold in that white coffin in the graveyard though I know he’s not thereanymore because angels come to the graveyard and open the coffin and he’sfar from the Shannon (River) dampness that kills, up in the sky in heaven withOliver and Margret where they have plenty of fish and chips and toffee and noaunts to bother you, where all the fathers bring home the money from the LabourExchange and you don’t have to be running around to pubs to find them. (McCourt, 90).By using comic relief, McCourt is able to keep the reader from being too overwhelmed with pathos for the despair that so many tragic events, death, starvation, alcoholism, poverty and the disdain of insensitive people. He delivers the relief in the familiar family situations that bring smiles, along with the tears. Like when the mischievous brothers climb downstairs when their parents are sleeping and try on the false teeth that sit on the shelf by the sink, and Malachy is unable to remove his father’s big teeth from his mouth and has to go to the hospital. Although a near tragic event, McCourt is able to find the humor in the situation, and relay it to the reader in a believable child’s voice, telling the story. McCort’s portrayal of the family living upstairs in a house where they are unable to live downstairs because of the overwhelming odor from the sewage of many other families which is dumped near their front door, although not funny, is made humorous where the inspectors for the Saint Vincent De Paul Society are told by Malachy, still a child, that his family lives in “Italy” a term they have dubbed the upstairs part of the house where they live. (McCourt, 104).Additionally, when the grandmother stops talking to, and supporting the family, the tragic effect of this fact is reduced when the reason is provided in an anecdote where the main character reveals it was because he puked up God in her backyard after he came home from his first communion, (McCourt, 129), and where he had “God stuck to the roof of (his) mouth.” (McCourt, 128). The reader is compelled to laugh at the thoughts of a child, over a potentially touchy situation that interferes with the grandmother’s faith, and causes a serious rift in the family. Even when the main character’s mother lies dying, and he and his brothers are brought to their aunt’s house, McCourt creates a moment of levity to relive the reader of her heavy heart when he hears his fat aunt in the other room tinkling, and he is afraid to tell his brothers because he thinks they will all break out laughing: “at the picture in our heads of Aunt Aggie’s big white bum perched on a flowery little chamber pot.” (McCourt, 242). Later, when he delivers a message to an Englishman, is dragged into the house, forced to drink sherry and ends up puking on the rose bush belonging to the man’s wife, and is later dismissed from his job, where he is saving to go to America, the reader is spared the severe disappointment by the humor in the story, and a voice that keeps comic relief in everything it describes. (McCourt, 328-329). The book ends on a note of hilarity where the main character, on his way to America, is about to have sex, and a priest comes to his door. “The bad women bring out sandwiches and pour more beer and when we finish eating they put on Frank Sinatra records and ask if anyone would like to dance. No one says yes because you’d never get up and dance with bad women in the presence of a priest …” Despite all of his suffering, McCourt is as entertaining as his is hilarious. He has an enviable voice, Angela’s Ashes is a tribute to any mother’s memory. #__________________McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes. Scribner. New York. 1996.

I don’t think anyone would describe Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, his account of growing up poor and starving in Ireland, as funny. Nevertheless, the many tragedies in his story are leavened by glimpses of humor. Near the beginning of his memoir, McCourt sets the scene in the following way:Out in the Atlantic Ocean great sheets of rain gathered to drift slowly up the River Shannon and settle forever in Limerick. The rain dampened the city from the Feast of Circumcision to New Year’s Eve. It created a cacophony of hacking coughs, bronchial rattles, asthmatic wheezes, consumptive croaks. It turned noses into fountains, lungs into bacterial sponges…The rain drove us into the church–our refuge, our strength, our only dry place. At Mass, Benediction, novenas, we huddled in great damp clumps, dozing through priest drone, while steam rose again from our clothes to mingle with the sweetness of incense, flower and candles.Limerick gained a reputation for piety, but we knew it was only the rain. (1-2)We learn that it rains in LimerickLimerick, but Limerick is not just wet, it stays wet for eternity. The great sheets of rain drift slowly up the River Shannon and settle forever in Limerick (emphasis added). We learned that the rain dampened the city from the Feast of Circumcision to New Year’s Eve. Not only does the detail of the ‘Feast of Circumcision’ sound humorous, but that sentence actually means that it stayed wet from January 1 to December 31. In the next sentence, McCourt takes things up a notch by providing us with a marvelous list of alliteration and onomatopoeia. Again, the details are compelling. We don’t just have a cacophony of coughs, which sounds clichéd, but a cacophony of hacking coughs. Just when you think this can’t possibly get any worse, McCourt tops that sentence with the next one: “It turned noses into fountains, lungs into bacterial sponges.” After a few more sentences (omitted for brevity), we learn that the rain drove everyone into church, it was “our refuge, our strength, our only dry place.” In this sentence, McCourt gives us a list which acts like a garden path sentence. It implies that it’s talking about one thing (the piety of the people of Limerick), when it’s actually talking about something else (their wish to get out of the rain). The next sentence gives us a marvelous image of all those people crowded into church in “great damp clumps, dozing through priest drone,” and this sets us up for the punch line at the end, that Limerick gained a reputation for piety, but “we knew it was only the rain.”And so the story begins with some humor, to ease the way for the tragedies that follow. I highly recommend this memoir. Five Stars.

From the beginning to the end, I was hooked. I wonder what the next chapter of Frank’s life looked like after such a tough start.

McCourt, Frank. Angela’s AshesIn 2016 Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes will be 20 years old, but it is still as fresh as it was when first published. After retiring from teaching in America McCourt began sorting his memoirs of childhood poverty in Limerick in the early Twentieth Century. The book, which he never expected to sell more than a few hundred copies took him a little over a year to complete. It won the Pulitzer Prize and a cascade of other awards. It topped bestseller charts for more than two years. Only Charles Dickens has managed to capture the general reader’s imagination like McCourt.Told entirely from the child’s perspective, the narrative succeeds in drawing the reader into a charmed circle of listeners to a tale of poverty and survival against the odds. Frankie was given up for dead in the fever hospital, refused absolution by priests because he cannot abstain from masturbating and hence is not in a fit state to be absolved. He finds an ‘easy’ priest, but the minister falls asleep during his confession.Throughout the book, the Catholic religion controls the minds of rich amd poor alike, but the rich have other comforts; the poor simply beg and starve and mostly die young. Yet this memoir, which should have been an agonising read, remains buoyant to the end. Frankie’s father is a confirmed alcoholic and mostly absent, leaving his wife Angela to cope with an increasing number of starving infants. Frankie suffers the loss of his siblings but needs to work to keep alive the remnants of his family in a rat-infested, fleahouse that collapses in a flood. He helps unload the farmers’ carts on market days and ‘at the end of the day they’ll give me vegetables they can’t sell , anything crushed, bruised or rotten in parts.’The boy manages to borrow books from the library, using Angela’s tickets to read about virgin martyrs ‘who always died singing hymns and giving praise not minding one bit if lions tore big chunks from their sides and gobbled them on the spot.’ But when the librarian finds him reading Lin Yütang she is horrified and dismisses him from the library for ever because of the use of one word - ‘turgid.’ ‘I know now what Mikey Molloy was talking about … that we’re no different from the dogs that get stuck into each other in the streets and it’s shocking to think of all the mothers and fathers doing the likes of this.’Although now starved of books Frankie survives and graduates from being a telegram boy to a deliverer of newspapers and magazines and finally to writing threatening letters for Mrs Finucane, a rich old lady on her last legs who has him saying prayers for her soul. Then, Pennies from Heaven or in Frankie’s case pounds: ‘The Friday night before my nineteenth birthday Mrs Finucane sends me for the sherry. When I return she’s dead in the chair, her eyes wide open. I can’t look at her … but I take the key to the trunk upstairs. I take forty of the hundred pounds in the trunk … and I’ll add this to what I have in the post office and I have enough to go to America.’ He drinks the sherry and throws the ledger containing a record of debts owed by the poor of Limerick into the River Shannon.

I bought this for my children to read. They thought that I was making it up when I told them about my parents childhood so I thought that this might make them realise how lucky they are.

I love audio books, especially on long journeys in the car , this is a classic book which I read years ago BUT it was awful to listen to, it was so badly read I had to switch it off. It will be off to the charity shop as soon as I have time

Ordered this book in paperback as strangely it is not available on kindle in english. It was a book club choice not my own and not really my thing but I did persevere with it.

Lovely story, I read it a few years ago and bought it for lockdown with his two other books, and enjoyed them immensely.