Angela's Ashes: A Memoir

Frank McCourt

Dec 1998 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

A Pulitzer Prize–winning, #1 New York Times bestseller, Angela’s Ashes is Frank McCourt’s masterful memoir of his childhood in Ireland.

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at 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.”

So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank’s mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank’s father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible, and beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father’s tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank’s survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig’s head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance, and remarkable forgiveness.

Angela’s Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt’s astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

Ratings and reviews

Angela’s Ashes is an enticing memoir by Frank McCourt that captures audience with its descriptive retelling of his young life in the 1930s and early 1940s. McCourt retells his life from birth in New York City to life in Ireland and back to New York as an adult. He shows the constant struggles he went through as a child growing up in an impoverished family. McCourt’s purpose to write this book was for readers to watch him grow and overcome many obstacles and go to the peak of his life from nothing. But to balance with the general mood of suffering he adds humor and charm to allow a lighter tone. McCourt narrates his struggles of coming from a Irish Catholic background which he explains in the quote, “Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.” McCourt’s main purpose to write this memoir was to illustrate his constant struggle while growing up and trying to understand the world. McCourt uses an informal style of writing and wrote how many of his Irish relatives talked. He uses present tense to show how he felt at that moment in time rather than reflecting on his childhood as an adult. Angela’s Ashes demonstrates the real and common struggles of people from his background and teaches us to appreciate what we have. As a teenager, Frank learned how to be independent and work on his own. He took care of his younger brother while his father was working and his mother was sick so he could earn money for his family during hard times. He did this all as a teenager. It’s very inspiring how such a young child had such ambition and determination to care for his loved ones. Frank McCourt’s autobiography inspires many people, young and old alike. It speaks to how one can overcome all odds and can achieve their dreams if they work for it. Frank McCourt truly inspires me. He went to New York for a new, fresh, better start at life. McCourt wanting a new start is relatable because my parents went to New York for a new start from India, hoping for a better life in the land of freedom. McCourt did an amazing job summarizing his childhood, with vivid detail and imagery.

An autobiography of McCourt chronicling his life in America as a young child, Ireland until 20ish and then his trip back to the US. McCourt explains in his own words the horrors he and his family had to endure thanks to a drunk father and a useless mother. He shows us what it's like to be poor. Just a wonderful, wonderful book. Hard to put down even though the content makes you want to cry. He endured such horrible difficulties in Ireland and America: from not having enough food to not having more than one pair of clothes to eating pigs head on Christmas to being hospitalized multiple times to being shut out by the Catholic church to having to fetch his father from the bar before he spent the money they had that week for food and rent. The reader learns the value of their own parents and their own upbringing from the dysfunction of his. He watched his sister and brothers die around him as he struggled to understand who he was. Finally he escaped back to America at the end which is the premise for the follow up Tis. His father Malachy, his mother Angela, his brothers Malachy (second oldest), Michael (next youngest) and Alphie (youngest) all play parts, as do his dead sister Margaret and his dead brothers Ollie and Eugene who were twins. The children's deaths were avoidable but the parents were useless and superstitious. His grandmother and more of his family also play smaller roles.

It's utterly offensive to the English language and all other literature. Poorly written, uninteresting story, and no proper conclusion. There is no flow or general progression of plot. He'll spend half the book on one year of his life, then skip three more years in one sentence. I can't NOT recommend this book enough.

About the author

Frank McCourt (1930–2009) was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, grew up in Limerick, Ireland, and returned to America in 1949. For thirty years he taught in New York City high schools. His first book, Angela’s Ashes, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. In 2006, he won the prestigious Ellis Island Family Heritage Award for Exemplary Service in the Field of the Arts and the United Federation of Teachers John Dewey Award for Excellence in Education.