I loved this book. I started out buying it as a gift for my mother. That might have been the last time I visited her at Christmas time (I'm not crazy about driving trips in the winter). And while there, I started reading it. I knew it I had to buy it for myself when I returned home. I did. And I read the book in about a week, if that long.

I'm part Irish. But you don't have to be Irish to like this book. Matter of fact, a lot of the Irish didn't like it because it exposed just how poverty stricken they were. And many people feel it is exaggerated.

But I think anyone who cares anything about people would like this book. It does have "in-your-face" poverty. Children who die because doctors aren't available or they are malnourished. People who look around and believe that if they stay where they are, they will be destined for the same poverty stricken life that their parents have.

To me this was a very moving book. You could be crying your eyes out on one page at the sorrow of it all and on the very next page you are laughing hysterically at the folly of it all. But, maybe that's just the Irish in me.

Frank grows up in horrible poverty in Limerick. His family returns from New York. His father is an alcoholic fantasist unable to hold down a job and drinks away any money he earns. His wife Angela and his children starve and several die.

The story is told with wit and humor even surrounded with grinding poverty and living in a slum Frankie and his family survive. The divide between the Protestants and Catholics is strong. Frankie is a Catholic and his family who are failed by the church.

Deaths in the family, sickness, school, cleanliness or lack of and his experiences growing up are told without navel gazing. Its an inspirational story in which Frank tells how he saved to immigrate back to America.

Well deserved winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Kratak sadržaj na poleđini knjige, u kojem imamo pitanja koja muče našeg pripovjedača, bio mi je presimpa i radovala sam se doznati s čime on to još ima problema, a i zanimali su me odgovori koje je zaključio teškim životom u siromaštvu.

„Kako izgleda anđeo sa sedme stepenice? U kakvoj je vezi Katolička crkva s vremenskim prilikama u Irskoj? Kako uopće netko može ostati živ ako treba dati život za vjeru, ali istovremeno i za Irsku?“

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"I stand on the deck with the Wireless Officer looking at the lights of America twinkling. He says, My God, that was a lovely night, Frank. Isn't this a great country altogether?"

'Tis.

Life is suffering.

And the root of all suffering is want.

And we want. Oh, we want.

We want the husband to keep the job and come home sober. We want the kids to live. We want shoes and clothes that fit and don't have holes. We want to eat. We want a roof that doesn't leak and indoor plumbing, for Christ's sake.

We want the priest with the servant not to kick us from his door and tell us our suffering is caused by sin. We want something kinder than guilt or shame.

We want friendship. We want love. We want more.

Oh, we want.

But why would YOU want to read this almost twenty year old memoir set in a far earlier time? What, after all, do you have in common with a brutally honest and witty boy growing up during the Depression and World War II in Limerick, Ireland?

Well, have you ever wanted anything?

Couldn't bear it. Whiney, self-obsessed and smacked of disingenuity. Using misery, either yours (imagined) or others (purloined) to make money seems to be the height/depth of cheap shots. Someone once told me of a review of the book that they had read somewhere

'Baby born, baby died, baby born, baby died, baby born, baby died, baby born, baby died; it rained'.

Admittedy there was more to it than that, however I read it a long time ago and the gloom of the misery and rain hangs still over the whole thing in a ridiculously hyperbolic manner. The father, an irresponsible drunken wastrel I just wanted to hit about the head quite dramatically with anything I could lay my hands on and the mother, an horrendous slatterny doormat, I found massively unsympathetic . I can only think of one character who i warmed to and as i remember she was dying of something or other.

Did not enjoy this and that was not because it brought me into contact with the suffering and misery of my fellow human beings which I couldn't bear to see but because it didn't. It did not ring true and was a sounding gong or clanging cymbal, making lots of noise but very little sense.

A parte de periodismo, no suelo leer mucha no ficción. Esta clase de textos son los que se consideran autobiográficos pero no son biografías, son memorias. Una etapa de la vida de una persona relatada por ella misma. En este caso tenemos los primeros años de vida y juventud de Francis McCourt.


Fotograma de la película de 1999

Francis era un niño nacido en Nueva York en 1930, hijo de inmigrantes irlandeses. Su padre y su madre se conocieron en esta ciudad. Malachy, el padre de Francis era un alcohólico que no tenía un trabajo estable y su madre Angela pasaba los días cuidando de Francis y sus hermanitos. En un punto de la historia, la familia McCourt debe regresar a Limerick, Irlanda y es donde se centra casi toda la historia narrada por Frank.

Leer estas memorias ha sido una especie de aprendizaje sobre una época pasada alejada de la realidad propia. Miles de irlandeses al igual que italianos y personas de muchas nacionalidades emigraron a Estados Unidos buscando un futuro a finales del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX, como los padres de Francis. Pero no contaban con la gran depresión pondría en vilo su bienestar. En este ambiente nació Francis, un niño de una familia católica en un barrio en el que sólo se juntaba con otros irlandeses católicos. Al regresar a Irlanda es cuando inicia realmente el relato de Francis desde que tiene unos 3 años hasta su juventud.



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McCourt’s classic puts the misery of the Irish squarely on the table. No bones about it, 800 years of colonization, along with an uncompromising religion, produced a terrible legacy of poverty, hunger and guilt relieved only by humour and alcohol.

This book covers Frank’s life journey out of America, where he was born and raised until age four, back to Ireland, and until he returns to the Land of the Free at the age of eighteen. The eldest in a family where younger siblings are destined to die unless they have strong survival instincts, Frank grows up early in the presence of an alcoholic and irresponsible father, Malachy, who could never hold down a job and who drank away his earnings. Changing his younger siblings diapers and looking after them when he was not quite out of diapers himself, Frank learns self-reliance and survival on the mean and cold streets of Dublin where consumption is the biggest killer. Everyone is eternally hungry, everyone is unwashed and dirty, everyone is yoked to a life of unending misery. That is my one criticism of this book—there is too much misery! The only escape is join the war effort; then one is able to send home money from the front, making proper meals possible again for the family. The war creates a two-tier society back home: those who receive telegrams with money and those who don’t. The other escape is America, the beacon that Frank yearns for, for after all, he is an American living in this shithole of his ancestors.

Frank’s Ireland also envelops its inhabitants with guilt. Frank’s guilt is legion:
a) Sleeping with the older and consumptive Theresa
b) Wanking in the field while the cows and sheep look on. I saw shades of Joyce here— someone always wanks in the open in a good Irish book.
c) Slapping his mother in anger over her sleeping with the landlord.
d) Smoking with his friends.
e) Drinking at age sixteen and heading down that giant path to perfidy carved out by his father.

When Malachy vanishes to England to work and send money home (he never does) the family gets evicted and is forced to live with a crippled man who lives in an attic. The new landlord offers them board in exchange for favours from Frank’s still-young mother, Angela, by night; and he expects Frank to empty his chamber pot by day. Frank detests his mother’s forced “duty.” He quits school and works at the post office delivering telegrams, and becomes a letter writer to a debt collector, counting his pennies for when he could escape this sorry place. Finally, he has to top up his savings to make his passage fare across, and he does that by robbing his employer. In this environment, I think the robbery is justified.

The strong feature in this book is not the hard luck story of a dirt-poor Irish family. There are many of those. What sticks in the mind is the way in which it is narrated: with quote-free dialogue, in the quirky vernacular of the Irish, and peppered with a myriad of humorous and tragic situations that Frank and his family find themselves in. Imagine toddlers woken up in the middle of the night by a drunken father to sing old battle songs of Ireland, or a little boy climbing on a table to reach the attic and bring down a fully loaded chamber pot smelling to the high heavens of excrement and urine, or the “excitement” that a pubescent and naked Frank experiences when he is out in the fields trying to dry his clothes. Imagine traditions where a father takes his son out to the pub for his first pint on his 16th birthday, or a rite of passage where you can’t take a girl out if you don’t smoke? Although supposed to be a memoir, this book certainly is Dickensian in its treatment.

When Frank finally arrives in America, his first night in his new home is enough to wipe out all the guilt, pain and sadness of Ireland. Instead of adding a spoiler and telling you what happens to Frank on that night of mind-bending pleasure, I will end with the last line of the book, “My God, that was a lovely night, Frank. Isn’t this a great country altogether?” And in answer, we are pointed to the one-word final chapter that follows: ’Tis. Which is ironically the title of the second book in this memoir trilogy. Frank may have learned survival in Ireland, but he certainly learned his marketing in America.

It was good, but I’m slightly underwhelmed.

Me ha sorprendido mucho que la historia estuviese narrada por el autor “niño” es decir no narrada por él ya de mayor explicando su infancia, sino por el niño mismo. Eso ha dado a la narración cierto toque de humor, y teniendo en cuenta que es una historia dura pero que muy dura, no puedes evitar que ciertos comentarios del Frank niño te saquen una sonrisa.

No me queda otra que poner en la lista de pendientes la continuación "Lo es".

Pela voz enternecedora e inocente de uma criança entramos num mundo repleto de miséria extrema, ignorância e crendice.

A acção decorre na década de 40, na Irlanda, entre a Grande Depressão e a II Guerra Mundial. Uma época penosa e conturbada.

Os relatos da fome, do frio, dos vícios que condenam vidas, das doenças e mortes prematuras, das condições paupérrimas onde sobrevivem, são de uma exposição dolorosíssima, inimagináveis. Contudo, o texto vai sendo contemporizado com algum sentido de humor, pela própria inocência da criança e com uma ternura e sinceridade emocionante.

”A comida deu-me uma volta ao estômago. Engasguei-me. Fui a correr para o pátio das traseiras e vomitei tudo. Ela veio atrás de mim.
Vejam bem o ele fez. Vomitou o pequeno-almoço da Primeira Comunhão. Vomitou o corpo e o sangue de Jesus. Agora tenho Deus no pátio das traseiras. O que é que eu hei-de fazer?” Pág. 133

”A Avó não fala com a Mãe por causa do que eu fiz a Deus no pátio das traseiras da casa dela. A Mãe não fala com a irmã dela, a Tia Aggie, nem com o irmão, O Tio Tom. O Pai não fala com ninguém da família da Mãe e eles não falam com ele por ser do Norte e ter aquela maneira estranha de ser. Ninguém fala com a mulher do Tio Tom, a Jane, por ser de Galway e parecer uma espanhola.(…) O Tio Tom e a Jane de Galway têm filhos, mas nós não podemos falar com eles, porque os nossos pais também não falam uns com os outros.(…)
As pessoas que moram nas ruas de Limerick e que são da mesma família têm a sua maneira própria de não falarem umas com as outras, mas para isso é preciso treinar muitos anos.” Pág. 136

”Em todas as ruas há alguém que não fala com alguém ou alguém com quem ninguém fala ou alguém que não fala com ninguém. Sabe-se sempres quem são as pessoas que não se falam pela maneira como passam umas pelas outras. As mulheres levantam o nariz, cerram os lábios e desviam a cara. Se uma delas leva xaile, pega numa ponta e atira-a para cima do ombro como que a dizer, Se te atreves a dirigir-me a palavra ou a olhar para mim, minha cabra, desfaço-te a cara.” Pág. 137

Discursos e pensamentos muito expressivos.

Curiosamente deparámo-nos com actos de compaixão e bondade de quem menos se espera, pessoas que tão pouco têm mas que não conseguem ficar indiferentes ao sofrimento alheio.

Odiei as descrições sobre o ensino, a crueldade gratuita, a presunção, a insensibilidade, o despejar informação a ser decorada, não exactamente compreendida.

Revoltei-me ainda mais com a atitude clerical que incutia e difundia um Deus mais castigador do que pacificador, com a ideia do pecado para impor um código de conduta muito rígido; a mensagem é: o acto (ou simples pensamento) pecaminoso do sexo, a fraqueza, a imperfeição do homem traduzem-se sempre no fim mais temido, o Inferno. E as pessoas viviam num permanente temor.

Não dei as 5 estrelas, porque senti que a dado momento, a narrativa se tornava repetitiva, mas em boa verdade, que mais aconteceria nas vidas deles senão a repetição de um dia após o outro tão cinzento quanto tormentoso?

Fiquei com vontade de conhecer o resto do percurso de Frank, mas fiquei com muitas reservas com as opiniões que li sobre o segundo volume e sinto-me tentada a saltar directamente para o terceiro, mas não já.

Я наверное неделю теперь не смогу ничего читать