I am so disappointed in this second install. I absolutely loved Angela’s Ashes. This one did not live up to the hype for me. This took WAY too long for me to get through, hence the 1 star. Maybe I shouldn’t have waited so long after finishing the first book but I just could not get into this one.

No girls, no food, no drink. Cockroaches smell food a mile away and once they're in you have them forever. She says, Of course you never saw a cockroach in Ireland. There's no food there. All you people do is drink. Cockroaches would starve to death or turn into drunks. Don't tell me , I know. My sister is married to an Irishman, worst thing she ever did. Irishmen great to go out with but don't marry them. (PG 23)

I loved this coming-to-America-culture shock. I also enjoyed the time period and McCourt’s wittiness.

This was so funny and sad at times but mostly funny. His narration is so great with the way he views things even himself. I liked how he compared Ireland and religion to New York and his weariness of everything.

Great memoir. Rest in peace. August 19, 1930-July 19, 2009.

A memorable read, an Irishman in New York. This is a sequel to Angela's Ashes. The start is one of the McCourt's eldest brother, coming into New York across the Atlantic to start a new life at the Big Apple. We are introduced to Irish culture in another land, the heartaches of work, the odd jobs to make ends meets, the bedsits, the education, marriage, and finally death. At times it is hilariously funny, at times poignant. We are introduced to books, authors, to the teaching profession and the pupils who are fed up with studying stuff they don't understand. You have to read to appreciate the sense of humour and life.

McCourt speaks with simplicity and brutal honesty. Incredible to imagine that even as a young boy alone in New York he recognized he wanted something more in his life/career. While he knew only of a life of suffering, the way he explained the suffering of his mother was acutely heart wrenching.

Depois de ter dado 5 estrelas a As Cinzas de Ângela (o meu rating traduz sempre o prazer que me dá a leitura de um livro, independentemente das polémicas que possa haver sobre ele), este segundo volume das memórias de Frank McCourt ficou bastante aquém das expectativas.

No início parecia ser um bom seguimento do livro anterior, mas depois comecei a aborrecer-me com as constantes referências aos olhos vermelhos e a outras circunstâncias que o autor vai repetindo, sempre com a mesma formulação, num registo de autocomiseração que não esperava. De tal forma me aborreci que interrompi a leitura durante alguns dias para desanuviar um pouco.

A qualidade da escrita parece ir decrescendo ao longo do livro e as últimas páginas nem pareciam ter sido escritas pela mesma pessoa.

Tenho o terceiro volume desta autobiografia, O Professor, e tenciono lê-la, mas talvez lá mais para o ano que vem...

Having read Angela's Ashes a few months back, I knew I wanted a continuation of the story, of Frank McCourt’s life and the lives of his family members. Can never get enough of that Misery Lit, I guess. In any case, ’Tis does serve as a continuation, picking up where Angela’s Ashes left off, with Frank’s arrival in New York. Only, this isn’t some cathartic culmination of Frank’s success, but rather the beginning of a new chapter, one that’s going to be long, arduous and fraught with difficulties, challenges and learning curves.

There are several themes Frank explores throughout this American chapter of his life, which I reckon can be divided into several different categories, those of alienation, teaching and Frank’s struggle to reconcile himself to his tough childhood and life in Ireland.

Alienation is everywhere. The pages of this memoir are soaked in it. Frank is constantly being made aware of his Otherness, his differences and his position as an outcast, a Paddy-just-off-the-boat. However, in a city as sprawling and diverse as New York, he is far from the only Other. New York is full of Italians, Greeks, Puerto Ricans, the Irish, Hispanics, Scandinavians, etc. You’d think that in a place that diverse there’d be lots of commingling, camaraderie and a sense of unity among all these different recently-arrived migrants from all over the world, but nah. Just as the Irish keep urging Frank to “stick to his own kind” and “marry one of his own”, so too do the members of all these other ethnicities and religions keep persuading their own.

Those first chapters are hauntingly beautiful, perfectly describing what it’s like to be a newcomer in a different land with all these strange, foreign customs. Even though Frank has an edge over other newcomers, what with having been born in New York, having an American passport and being fluent in English, there are still some unmistakeable culture shocks he must acclimatise himself to. He is constantly looked down upon, marginalised and Other-ed, and suffers from low self-esteem and an inferiority complex due to his poor health, bad teeth and lack of dazzling Hollywood-like beauty.

He is painfully aware of his Otherness, constantly reminded of it, homesick and lonely. He dreams of going to college and being able to earn enough to support himself, fantasises about pretty women and about one day fitting in with all these healthy Americans with dazzling smiles and bright futures. Ashamed of his childhood spent in penury in the slums of Limerick, Frank mostly keeps to himself, as he slowly works his way up to ever better job positions and ever better standard of life.

These chapters made me so glad I don’t live in the 1950s. Even though some things are still the same, I reckon many have improved since then. The casual racism, the ignorance, the abject poverty, the xenophobia, the dehumanisation… We still, to this day, like to compartmentalise people according to these or those criteria, but I feel the divide isn’t as drastic nowadays, that it’s much easier on fresh immigrants than it was back when Frank crossed the Atlantic.

He keeps thinking of life back home, of his family in Ireland, his poor mother Angela whose dreams and hopes turned to ashes in the fireplace, how his irresponsible father ruined them and crippled Frank and his siblings with his drinking, how they all now have to work extra hard to make it in this world and I feel that misery, not as acutely as Frank and thousands of other Franks out there in the world who’ve had to resort to stealing and begging in order to avoid starvation, but I feel that injustice, how bloody unfair it is that the people who were supposed to help you out in life the most actually hindered your progress, so now you have to work twice as hard as the rest so as to keep up and make something of yourself.

There’s a certain envy there on Frank’s part, as he observes his American peers who’ve had it relatively easy in life, especially in comparison. It’s difficult for him to accept that certain people are born into privilege and affection, whereas he suffered such neglect and hardship and this is best reflected in his mixed feelings for his parents, especially his “shiftless loquacious alcoholic father”.

Frank is saved from his miserable job at the Biltmore Hotel by the Cold War. Whereas all the other Americans are made paranoid by the threat of communism, Frank sees in it an opportunity to rise in society and achieve something better. The military, from my perspective at least, offers a miserable life, one of indoctrination, ignorance, blind servitude and bigotry, but Frank nonetheless manages to get something out of it – a chance to become a University student and join all those bright young people who read important books on the subway. There, he meets Alberta, his first serious girlfriend and his eventual wife and the mother of his daughter.

It is clear their relationship is a difficult one from its infancy. We see in it all the red flags of an eventual doomed marriage, not because Frank and Alberta come from different nationalities or religions or backgrounds, but because there is no true communication between the two, no discussion of expectations, long-term goals or personal beliefs that would make them realise whether they’re compatible or not. In any case, theirs is a volatile, off-and-on relationship that stumbles to the altar, it seems, not because they’re perfect for each other, but because societal norms convinced them that’s just the way it’s meant to be if you’ve dated someone for a while and can stomach their existence enough without the desire to strangle them with your bare hands.

Frank’s post-graduation career life likewise proves to be an uphill battle. He’s no longer a Paddy-off-the-boat, but is very much a recent graduate with no experience asked to teach in a vocational high school. His students don’t respect him, fight him every day, make use of delay tactics and show next to no interest in learning anything. Frank’s patience with them is saintly. If I were confronted with a class like this, I’d show up to work each morning with a flamethrower. Through the use of ingenuity and alternative teaching methods the higher-ups do not always approve of, Frank manages to spark his students’ interest and grow himself, as both an educator and a person.

Finally, there’s Frank’s thread back to Ireland, to his childhood, his siblings and his parents. The ghosts of his past, which he refers to as the “dark clouds” in his head, periodically haunt him as he struggles to reconcile the person he is and the person he wants to be with the person he used to be, that emaciated boy wandering the lanes of Limerick, imploring his father to come home from the pub, assisting his mother in finding food and provisions, taking care of his younger siblings. It’s an arduous emotional journey, coming to terms with one’s childhood, one’s parents’ failed parenting strategies, one’s guilt, one’s blame, maturing enough to see one’s parents as real, flawed people who tried, whether successfully or otherwise, to do their best.

Frank’s first return to Ireland is especially touching, though also equally infuriating. He gets to see just how indoctrinated his mother is, how low her bar is set, how little she expects from life. It is a psychological sort of cage, when what you’re used to becomes the new norm, the only norm you recognise because habit and necessity have made you forget you deserve something better. It’s difficult to see the people you love succumb to that cage. It makes you both pity them and attack them for not knowing any better, for accepting what they think they deserve.

Frank’s encounters with his father are equally unsettling. Malachy Sr. is a lost cause, yet his sons continue to extend allowances and justifications in the hopes that he may one day change. That day never arrives. Certain people never change and never grow, regardless of how many opportunities or how much help we give them and that is a hard truth of life right there, one that’s painful and uncomfortable and difficult to internalise, but one that all of us still need to accept.

All in all, ’Tis isn’t quite as gripping or formidable as Angela’s Ashes, but it is still an incredibly potent narrative of a man’s life. I think the aspect where it shines the brightest is in its descriptions of a migrant’s journey and assimilation into a foreign culture. It reminds me quite a bit of Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language, another splendid nonfictional account of what it means to be a newcomer. If I’m being honest, there is no part of this memoir that disappoints. It is an excellent piece of prose by all standards. However, it is a given that the majority of the readers will compare it to Angela’s Ashes, perhaps even subconsciously so. Next to it, ’Tis doesn’t shimmer quite as brightly, an unfair comparison perhaps. That still does not make this memoir an inferior work. If you liked Angela’s Ashes, then you’ll surely enjoy its continuation as well and I definitely recommend you check it out.

This is and isn’t a sequel to “Angela’s Ashes” because it’s not really the story of Angela and her struggles to feed her family in New York and Ireland but the continuing story of the author and oldest son, Frank. Having concluded that there’s nothing much for him in Limerick after being rejected for secondary school except a subsistence job for the Post Office, he takes the decision at 19 to move back to New York. So rather than continuing the moving story of his mother, he writes about his adventures and misadventures as he tries to establish himself in the city of his birth. The question is then, does this shift in tone work? Well, no, because it’s a completely different story, and the author is less sympathetic.

There is obviously a lot of humor here in his struggles and having moved around quite a lot myself, I can appreciate the struggle, and in particular since I also took my accent with me everywhere I went. I’m originally from New York so even in California, I ran into problems at times; I won’t even mention the problems of changing countries and languages, let alone dealing with anti-New York or anti-American attitudes. (I should be clear here: The President doesn’t have me on speed-dial to consult with me on foreign policy decisions so complain elsewhere.) In Frank’s case, everyone has an Irish relative and everyone feels the need to comment on his accent to the point that he just prefers to keep his mouth shut. (It happens, believe me.) One of his early jobs is at a hotel, cleaning up in the lobby after rich and privileged university students. He eventually becomes a high school English teacher where he has the thankless job of trying to convince the students that the required reading has meaning and value in their lives. (Lower middle-class students and “The Great Gatsby” were not a good match; I was one of the former and passed on the latter and its brethren, probably because I was force-fed and needed to come around on my own. I don’t think I’m alone in this. Then they handed out “Vanity Fair” …)

Now, we get to some of my hang-ups with the book. Frank spends a lot of time complaining about how he has no money to eat but he always finds funding for late afternoon “liquid refreshment” which stretches into the wee hours; I don’t think that people always bought him all his drinks so it’s clear that he had his priorities and food wasn’t one. In this, he resembles his barfly father except that Frank always sent money back to Ireland for his mother and brothers, unlike his father when his dad went off to Coventry in England and left the family impoverished. A similar situation happens when he’s love-struck by a woman in university and manages to win her against all odds, marries her and they had a daughter. The problem here is that she’s from a different social class, fairly posh, while he’s strictly proletarian. They have friends, there are dinners and parties to attend, and Frank knows he has to arrive but he always meets a friend who invites him for a drink or twelve, time flies but Frank is firmly landed on a barstool while his wife fumes because she’s been stood up once again. Save your tears, Frank, they’re wasted on me. Two of his brothers have also arrived and are habitués of an uptown bar and wonder why he even bothers with her when he can be with them. (Although not mentioned in the book, his second marriage wasn’t much better; it was his third wife who brought out his creative side and encouraged him to write.)

Angela makes a late appearance as her health declines (with a lot of help from Angela) and she brings a lot of badly-needed comic relief at the end, as does his brother, Malachy. (I should mention that Malachy was a famous raconteur when I lived in New York and another brother, Michael, was the “King of Bartenders” when I lived in San Francisco; Frank had the weight of the world – and his family – on his shoulders, it seems.) However, she couldn’t lift this book from the drudgery that preceded it, not for me. It just never really took off but it had a hard act to follow so maybe that’s understandable.

En este libro Frank McCourt utiliza el mismo estilo narrativo fluido, fresco y con una dosis de humor que le valió el premio Pulitzer de su primer libro las Cenizas de Angela. No obstante, no equipara la calidad del primero tal vez porque la historia de su infancia atrapa más al lector que la historia de su vida en Estados Unidos enfrentándose a una sociedad marcada por los prejuicios de la época.

Het was verfrissend om deze boek voor tweede keer te mogen lezen om Franks " way to the top" beter te kunnen begrijpen. Helaas zelfde als de vorige keer dat jammerlijke toon van de hele boek maakt behoorlijk wat van de hele verhaal kapot. :-((

Love love love. McCourt’s unique writing style only adds to the artistry of the storytelling.

The narration of Frank McCourt's life continues in this volume, in which he faces the adversities of life in America.

It is quite easy to understand till the beginning that this version of Frank McCourt is an older, more mature one, that, during the narration, becomes more and more aware of the hypocrisies and incoherences of the society, in a country where theoretically everyone should have the opportunity to make his own fortune but where practically it's harder than ever to make it happen.

Frank is fully conscious of his "inferiority" and often rant about it and about his jealousy towards the university students. I really liked this part of the book, because I could totally feel what F. McCourt was saying: it was a mighty, spontaneous desire to gain all the possible knowledge. And I appreciated the importance he gave to teaching, too, however, in particular in the last part of the book, I started to disagree more and more with his tendency passivity, his inability to impose his opinions and himself over others, a behavior that made me remember of his father.

The last part of the book, then, was utterly sad. While in Angela's Ashes there was hope, in this one there was just sadness, that type that comes from disillusionment and old age, partially.

Anyhow, his writing style is still the same, even more acute I may say in stressing the inconsistencies of life.

Pales in comparison to its prequel Angela's Ashes, which is heart-wrenching and brilliant.