Frank McCourt #1

Angela’s Ashes

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Imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion. This is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

"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 Pulitzer Prize winning 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.

224 pages, KINDLE

First published September 5,1996

This edition

Format
224 pages, KINDLE
Published
December 17, 1998 by Simon \u0026 Schuster
ISBN
9780007718726
ASIN
0007718721
Language
English
Characters More characters
  • Frank McCourt

    Frank Mccourt

    Francis "Frank" McCourt (August 19, 1930 – July 19, 2009) was an American teacher and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, best known as the author of Angelas Ashes, an award-winning, tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood.mo...

About the author

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Francis McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Angela's Ashes, a tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood.

Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 97 votes)
5 stars
34(35%)
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97 reviews All reviews
April 17,2025
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In this week’s episode of “Is Kelly Really That Dumb?” (spoiler alert – she is) let’s discuss the fact that she never read Angela’s Ashes because for some reason she thought it was a book about a family in a concentration camp and was never quite in the headspace to tackle it. Then she Googled “funny memoirs” and it popped up, but since it was Reddit I figured some troll was trollin’. Turns out they weren’t (and also this obviously wasn’t anything like I had thought it was about).

The story here is about the McCourt family – who move back across the pond from New York to Ireland since daddy has more than a little problem with keeping a job and not being on the drink – told by Frank. It is somehow both heartbreakingly tragic and laugh-out-loud funny. I listened to it on audio – and be warned it is about 112 million hours long – but it made my walks so much more enjoyable and I was sad when I finished.
April 17,2025
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Δεν έχει πολλά να πω για αυτό το βιβλίο, όλα όσα πρέπει να ξέρετε είναι στο οπισθόφυλλο.
Το είχα διαβάσει πρώτη φορά δανεισμένο από τη Δημοτική Βιβλιοθήκη της Ξάνθης όταν σπούδαζα εκεί και μου έμεινε στο μυαλό για χρόνια, οπότε κάποια στιγμή που το πέτυχα το αγόρασα. Και τώρα που το ξαναδιάβασα; ξανά το ίδιο συναίσθημα, να σκέφτομαι ότι είναι απίστευτο ότι ο συγγραφέας επέζησε από όλη αυτή τη φτώχια και την πείνα για να μας διηγηθεί την ιστορία του. Και θλίψη για την Άντζελα που κατάφερε να μεγαλώσει τα παιδιά της, παρότι ο τρόπος ζωής και η αδράνειά της είναι αδιανόητα για την εποχή μας (ή τη δική μου νοοτροπία εν πάση περιπτώση).
Τέλος πάντων, πραγματικά αν το πετύχετε κάπου διαβάστε το χωρίς δεύτερη σκέψη, είναι πολύ ωραίο βιβλίο.
April 17,2025
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I'm still pondering this book and its impact on me - I think I will be ruminating on it for a while - but it's not hard to give it the five stars. The writing is superb while being innocent and understated, and packed with deeper meaning. Been wanting to read it for a long time and now that I have, I am eager to read what my fellow Goodreads friends wrote about it in their own reviews. It's the kind of book you want to talk about; no wonder it was a book club favorite the year it came out. It probably still is. I would talk more about the ashes but that would be a spoiler perhaps... Suffice it to say that sometimes when you look for something in a book that you think you should see at some point, you find that that something was there all along, everywhere...
April 17,2025
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Non-fiction memoir about Frank McCourt’s family from his birth in 1930 to 1949. After being born in Brooklyn in 1930, Frank’s father, Malachy, has troubles with alcohol and with finding work, and, during the Great Depression, decides to return to Ireland. The alcohol and work issues continue in Ireland, and the growing family lives in poverty.

The titular Angela is Frank’s long-suffering mother. She endures a seemingly never-ending series of hardships, including her husband’s alcoholism, abandonment, and the deaths of multiple children. McCourt gives us an idea of her character: “You never know when you might come home and find Mam sitting by the fire chatting with a woman and a child, strangers. Always a woman and child. Mam finds them wandering the streets and if they ask, Could you spare a few pennies, miss? her heart breaks. She never has money so she invites them home for tea and a bit of fried bread and if it’s a bad night she’ll let them sleep by the fire on a pile of rags in the corner. The bread she gives them always means less for us and if we complain she says there are always people worse off and we can surely spare a little from what we have.”

While the misery is vividly portrayed, McCourt offsets it with subtle humor. For example, his father would drunkenly awaken his children during the night, singing patriotic songs and making them pledge to die for Ireland, leading Frank to observe: “The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.” At one point, his mother wants him to learn to dance, leading to: how I can die for Ireland if I have to sing and dance for Ireland, too. I wonder why they never say, You can eat sweets and stay home from school and go swimming for Ireland.”

It is written from a child’s perspective in present tense. Much of the narrative is extremely detailed, and it may be too much description of misery for some people. I found it poignant, filled with both tragedy and humor. I particularly enjoyed all references to books and storytelling McCourt encountered in his youth, as it would be very easy for people living under dire conditions to never be exposed to literature.
April 17,2025
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But the worst offender of the last twenty years has to be the uniquely meretricious drivel that constitutes "Angela's Ashes". Dishonest at every level, slimeball McCourt managed to parlay his mawkish maunderings to commercial success, presumably because the particular assortment of rainsodden cliches hawked in the book not only dovetails beautifully with the stereotypes lodged in the brain of every American of Irish descent, but also panders to the lummoxes collective need to feel superior because they have managed to transcend their primitive, bog-soaked origins, escaping the grinding poverty imagined in the book, to achieve - what? Spiritual fulfilment in the split-level comfort of a Long Island ranch home? And Frankie the pimp misses not a beat, tailoring his mendacity to warp the portrayal of reality in just the way his audience likes.

No native Irish reader, myself included, has anything but the deepest contempt for this particular exercise in literary prostitution and the cynical weasel responsible for it.

{my apologies to the fine people of Long Island, for the unnecessary vehemence of the implied slur in the above review: clearly it is not meant to be all-encompassing}
April 17,2025
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“O meu pai, Malachy McCourt, nasceu numa quinta em Toome, no Condado de Antrim. Tal como o seu pai, levou uma vida violenta, sempre em conflito com os Ingleses, ou com os Irlandeses, ou com ambos. Lutou ao lado do Antigo IRA e, por um acto de desespero qualquer, acabou como fugitivo e com a cabeça a prémio.
Quando eu era criança, costumava olhar para o meu pai, para o seu cabelo fraco, a sua falta de dentes e perguntava a mim próprio porque havia alguém de pagar um prémio por uma cabeça daquelas.”

Uma história dramática, uma infância desoladora que nunca se esgota. Apesar desta irreparável realidade imposta à criança do autor, muitos dos seus relatos são contados com graciosidade, humor e ingenuidade.
Uma leitura que valeu a pena!
April 17,2025
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Ah Mr. McCourt is on my short list of people I would love to meet, especially after watching him on PBS doing a pub crawl show around Ireland. He seems like a man I could share a pint with and hear great stories in an Irish brogue. Ashes broke my heart and made me thankful for everything I have in my life. You don't understand "poor" until you read this. It reminds me of stories my mom told of her parents during the Great Depression, but worse, but thru it all, McCourt remains a charming story-teller not looking for sympathy, but telling a story. As a storyteller myself, I appreciate his straight-forward approach. This book is a gem and one of my faves.
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