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What are readers saying about Angela's Ashes?
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Bejae posted a review at 2012-03-04 07:56:39.
(Language: English)
 
Wonderful book. Laugh, cry and love it.
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A Reader posted a review at 2011-09-07 06:37:41.
(Language: English)
sad sad sad
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-08-14 09:42:00.
(Language: English)
This is a tough book to get in to, the first couple of chapters are a bit of a chore to wade through. I nearly gave up on it and cast the book aside, but decided to give it a chance and continued.Once you break through that opening point the book just flows smoothly and ends leaving you wanting more, although for that you'd need to seek out McCourt's two other memoirs, Tis and Teacher Man. Angelas Ashes is an incredible story of a young boy's childhood growing up in Ireland in the early part of the last century. At times it's comical, others it's swamped in squalor and desperation but it's always an engrossing read. I managed to finish the entire book in 2 days (after struggling through the opening pages). This is an awesome book and one of my favourite's. The movie and the book sequels are firmly on my 'must' list. Put them on yours too.
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Twinkle posted a review at 2010-02-01 12:20:05.
(Language: English)
My all time favourite book. Beautifully written and rhythmic to the point that reading is so effortless it almost seems that the book is being read to you. A true story that makes you laugh, cry, and think - about poverty, religion, alcoholism, families and love. This is the book that kicked off the whole 'my terrible childhood' genre the market is now flooded with, but nothing published since comes close to Angela's Ashes because Frank McCourt's gift was that he never asked for our sympathy or understanding, he just told us a story with humour and honesty.
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A Reader posted a review at 2011-02-23 09:46:35.
(Language: English)
Well. What can you say. I waited 15 years to read this, hoping that the hype would have died down by now to such a degree that I could enjoy it. What I liked most about it is how strictly McCourt adheres to the child's point of view - he only relates things he observed or understood as a child. This very effectively places you in the scene and in young Frank's mind. The only problem with it is that after 200 pages I got the point, but it went on and on. Da drinks, Ma cries, the schoolmaster beats me, etc. Not exactly a revelation to anyone with even a minor knowledge of Irish literature, and I confess I skimmed the last 50 or so pages.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-01-09 08:22:11.
(Language: English)
Great story, well written. A boy's life growing up dirt poor, drunk ass father, depressed mother, and an Irish Catholic on top of it. Told with a bit of humor that has you looking at growing up from the child's perspective, but at the same time a sad life of tormoil with a father who hardly brings any money home, even when he gets some and the children are starving, sick and with no clothes.So far I really like it. Sad story though. Too bad they didn't have birth control in the thirtys.
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Peachy posted a review at 2010-04-10 07:26:08.
(Language: English)
Raw insight into a disparaging flight for survival, through the eyes of a survivour whose spirit is felt on every page. All should be made to read this enlightening memoir, for the "haves" will learn appreciation and compassion, and the "have nots", faith and inspiration. A powerful reminder of the division caused by religion and a class system, in a world where everyone has to wipe their arse. (Pa Keating is a gem). Check out more of my reviews at BookSnakeReviews
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-01-11 04:10:59.
(Language: English)
I like Frank McCourt. Depressing when you focus on what the conditions of this family are, but it's done with great humor in it. Frank is describing themes from his own life and I love that as well. He's brilliant in how he is able to effectively portray the way (I believe) children view hardships: accepting of all people even if they are incredibly mean, normalizing the abnormal and the overall resilience that children have. All three of his books are excellent.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-08-06 12:12:01.
(Language: English)
A very interesting style of writing the narration of McCourt's childhood growing up in Ireland. At times it was hard for me to follow each character's thought and had to re-read some passages. Sprinkled in between the memories of a childhood filled with struggles and some darkness are moments of bright lights that brought out a calm chuckle and warm smile. I understand that he has another book out, which may pick up where this left off. Is the title "Angela's Ashes" a metaphor for her children (dead and alive) or a reference to the hearth that she retreats to escape her pain? Hmmmmmm. Also, I'd like to watch the movie now that I've read the book.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-06-27 09:56:28.
(Language: English)
i really thought i'd never finish this book, even though it's only been a week. it read so much slower than everything else i've been reading. that's not to say it isn't good, it's just a slow read. anyway, there is one quote i really like. and that is... it's lovely to know the world can't interfere with the inside of your head (202) ...isn't that a grand quote? Oh, and I guess some people might be interested in hearing what the book is about. It's Frank's nonfiction account of his childhood/adolescence, which is plagued by insane poverty. For instance, at one point his family is forced to pull boards off the walls of their home in order to burn them for heat. The house ends up collapsing as a result.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-06-15 07:28:32.
(Language: English)
I had to read this book for an english class. I'm not much of a non-fiction reader but it was very interesting to see life on the other side of the tracks. It makes you grateful to have food, a family, a job, an opportunity to go to college. I still wonder how someone with so many bad experiences could make it as far as McCourt did. It is definitely an inspirational book for anyone who wants to give up in life.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-01-07 07:52:37.
(Language: English)
Most will say this is the saddest story that they ever read and what's the use, but that is far too misleading. Yes, this is a memoir about a boy who grew up in poverty in post famine ireland, who watched his siblings die and his family starve and beg as his father drank his wages away but the story is incredibly reassuring and comical. Frank McCourt isnt bitter, he is innocent to most things, and he has an incredible imagination which probably shielded him from desparity when most would have drowned in it. i think everyone should read this, for hope.
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Louise posted a review at 2011-01-23 06:11:18.
(Language: English)
The dire poverty Frank McCourt grew up in in Ireland was appalling. A drunken father who drank his pay cheque away almost weekly left his mother with no money to purchase food or clothing for the children. Being forced to live in a slum of an apartment and watching some younger children die because of no heat in your apartment or no money for medicine must have been horrific. Alot of people from Ireland lived this same life and it is disgraceful that the governmentof Ireland allowed this to go. This was one of my most favourite novels!
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Sampada posted a review at 2010-01-11 10:21:20.
(Language: English)
Two kinds of literature always make an impact on you – the kinds that make you cry, and the kinds that make you laugh. Very rarely does a book make you both laugh and cry intermittently. Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes had exactly that effect on me. On every other page I would be moved to tears and as I progressed through the book, I began to get accustomed to the dire poverty and dearth faced by the characters of the book and began to laugh with them. I am a fan of everything Irish – from W.B. Yeats to The Corrs, from Samuel Beckett to Riverdance. Give me anything Irish, I’ll take it as it is. That could be one of the reasons I enjoyed this book, set in Limerick, Ireland, so much. But I am sure it’s just a small reason. The bigger reason is the fact that I somehow identify with the poverty that the writer went through as a child. No, I was nowhere close – but I’ve seen it from close. And even if you have not, McCourt will show it to you. His writing is poignant, clear and full of life. In spite of the fact that he wrote this book much later, his four year old self and eighteen year old self grow inside the book, and change the way they tell you his story. You are inside their house on Roden Lane, playing with the children in the park in Brooklyn, dropping telegrams with Frankie in the streets of Limerick. You’re there. It’s around you. That’s the beauty of a well written book. I look forward to reading the sequel ‘Tis.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-07-18 04:59:47.
(Language: English)
The story of a boy whose parents were Irish, and came to America independently just as the depression hits. They meet and go after staying a short while not having any success in America go back to Ireland with Frank in tow. They have about as much success in Ireland as they did in America. Frank's dad gets the dole every week since he fought with the IRA but drinks it away before he gets home. When the war starts the English are desperate for workers and recruit the Irish so Frank's dad goes over there and is supposed to send money back but predictably doesn't. For me the book didn't really pick up till Frank got older and was somewhat self aware. It was surprising to me how real the Irish problem with alcohol seems to be. Apparently that is not just an idle stereotype. I further found it shocking that either Frank or his brothers survived their childhood. In the book Frank recounts how since they had no money for food they fed the babies (they were catholic and not all them survived) bottles of sugar water. I read this and kept thinking babies need nutrients and vitamins to grow but the nutritional value of these bottles is essentially zero. For that reason it is a wonder any of them survived. In Ireland tea is a huge deal, I guess they got that from the English. It was also interesting, not being catholic or religious myself, to see life in a nation of catholics. Honestly the most brilliantly written parts of the book come from two first experiences with women. The first being Patricia Madigan who is in the room next to him in the hospital when he nearly dies from typhoid. She teaches him poetry until the nun catches them at it and calling it sinful for reasons I have been unable to follow, moves Frank to another floor. By the time Frank is better Patricia has died. The second is with Theresa Carmody with whom he has his first romantic encounters with while he works as a telegram boy. She too is sick and dies not long after Frank meets her. Both of these women Frank treats with such a light and honest touch that one cannot help but be pierced to the core by their poignancy. I also enjoyed the cadence of the Irish brogue in the book. Frank doesn't seek to avoid it but at the same time doesn't try to bludgeon me over the head with how differently they talk over there. All in all it was a more than decent book.
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Thom posted a review at 2009-06-23 08:11:51.
(Language: English)
An unbelievably depressing childhood somehow comes across as a funny, feel-good coming-of-age story. This autobiography is more like a work of fiction. Told from the perspective of the author as a child I found a lot to like about this story. It even made me cry a little bit (I think a first for a book). My father was born in Ireland and although I'm not very Irish myself the people in this story were very familiar characters from my own travels that made me laugh a lot. I didn't want to put it down. My only criticism is that the teenage years go through as a bit of a blur but I suppose that is typical of a teenager!
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-01-14 12:07:25.
(Language: English)
Heartbreaking and hilarious are the best words to describe Frank McCourt's memoir of childhood. We pass from infancy to age nineteen in this first volume of his autobiography. His childhood is terrible - an alcoholic and proud father drinks all the family's money leaving them destitute and hungry and you can feel Frank's desperation on the page as well as his mother's misery. But there is also love in this family, and the great family stories that we can all relate to. We meet the extended McCourt family and their friends as well as the petty bureaucracies (Catholic church, I'm looking at you) that prevent them from moving forward. It is sad that at so many points Frank's ambitions and dreams are thwarted simply by barriers of class and status that we can't imagine occurring in the English-speaking world less than a lifetime later. Laugh-out-loud funny and pitifully sad, often within the same page.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-20 08:55:43.
(Language: English)
Angela’s Ashes is a memoir by Irish author Frank McCourt, and tells the story of his childhood. It was published in 1996 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. Plot summary Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1930, McCourt is the eldest son of Malachy and Angela McCourt. He is joined by brother Malachy in 1931, twins Oliver and Eugene in 1932, and a sister, Margaret, in 1933. After the death of his sister Margaret when she was only a few weeks old, his parents move the family back to their native Ireland, where his younger twin brothers both die within a year of the family's arrival and where Frank's youngest brothers, Michael (b. 1936) and Alphie (b. 1940) are born. Life in Ireland, and specifically life in Limerick City, in the 1930s and 1940s is described in all its grittiness. The family lives in a dilapidated lane of houses that regularly floods, and share one outdoor toilet with all their neighbours. Although his father teaches the children Irish stories and songs, he is an alcoholic and seldom finds work, and so they live on the dole (unemployment) or charity while the father spends days drinking in bars. For years the family subsists mostly on bread and tea. (Divorce was illegal in Ireland until 1997). Frank's father finally gains employment during World War II at a defense plant in Coventry, England. In this situation, he finds it easy to drink away most of his wages, and only once does he send any money back to the struggling family in Ireland. Their mother is destitute, as there are not many jobs for women at the time. Angela's sister and her widowed mother begrudge any help they have to give her, because they disapprove of her husband, mostly because he hails from Northern Ireland and therefore he has a strange accent and what Angela's family calls 'the odd manner.' The McCourt family are continually afraid of going to hell if they do not pray or confess often enough as specified by the church. In the damp, cold climate of Ireland, the children have only one set of ragged clothing each, patched shoes and no coats or boots. Frank develops typhoid and chronic conjunctivitis, and is hospitalized. Sometimes Frank and his brothers have to scavenge for lumps of coal or peat turf for fuel, or steal bread to survive. The family is finally evicted after Frank yanks out wall beams to burn for winter heat, causing the roof to collapse. The family is forced to move in with a distant relative who treats them poorly. Teenage Frank starts work for the Post Office as a telegram delivery boy, and also works for the local money lender writing threatening letters to the people who owed her money, as a means to save money and is finally able to realize his dream of returning to America. The story ends as he sails into Poughkeepsie, New York, to begin a new life at the age of nineteen.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-07-21 09:21:25.
(Language: English)
Stories that compel you to seek high and low every time you step into a library should be cherished. Language that draws you into a culture and way of life (even if a miserable one) should be admired. A story about life- and a life seen through a child's eyes- and an adult's memory- lives on eternally. Angela's Ashes is a story as such. The style that expresses the innocence as only a child can have, and filled entirely with wit and humor. Narrative and detailed descriptive all at once, the book is hard to put down- the squalor, the attempts, the little traits of cheer in an otherwise damp and miserable childhood. And it further establishes the hungry desire for his dreams, those dreams of a little boy in Limerick, Ireland.
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Moe posted a review at 2012-12-24 06:14:33.
(Language: English)
Funny at times. Sad and heart wrenching throughout. Heartbreaking but somewhat triumphant in how franks determined personality gets him through his rough childhood and upbringing. A must read.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-08-05 07:01:21.
(Language: English)
How odd to read the memoir of one's life admist his death. Frank McCourt died July 19, 2009 and he was born August 19, 1930. Considering all of the trials, dangers, and deaths in his life, I am amazed that he lived so long... and made a huge literary contribution to our society! However, regardless of getting typhoid, being surrounded by consumption, eye sores, and numerous sibling deaths, Frank's story is one of a harsh childhood reality-- both in America and in Ireland. His voice in the story is raw and naive, so much so that he reflects the innocence he knew of the culture and society he lived in. The story chronicles Frank's life up to the age of nineteen and he shares candidly his fears, his experiences, and his sins. I agree with McCourt's first sentence of the book: "My father and mother should have stayed in New York wher ethey met and married and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four..." As I finished the book, I couldn't help but reflect on how Frank's life would have been different if they would have stayed in New York because he eventually comes full circle and ends up at his starting place after nineteen years of hardship. However, this memoir shows that indeed "the journey is the destination" because Frank's resilency is what saves him-- not his family, and especially not his father. Overall, this book speaks of a childhood starved (literally) but it represents the fullness of following one's dream... the American dream.
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Stephanie posted a review at 2010-01-05 09:06:31.
(Language: English)
Not exactly a feel-good-book...unless you're idea of fun involves suffering children, starving babies, abused impoverished women, alcholic fathers, and a stark prose that renders it all-too-clearly... But it's brilliant. Prose, characters, story, everything is near perfect. In fact, if this were required reading in high school, under-aged, unprotected sex would practically vanish. So I guess it has a social message as well...
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Valeria posted a review at 2010-03-01 02:12:11.
(Language: English)
This was an amazing book! I am so glad I had a chance to read it. This memoir depicts the struggles endured by the author and his family in the US and Ireland before and during WWII. The characters are powerful and pitiful at the same time, and even in the darkest despair, the voices of the children make you smile with their unexpected humor. Some of my favorite passages: p. 108 "Dad says I'll understand when I grow up. He tells me that all the time now and I want to be big like him so that I can understand everything. It must be lovely to wake up in the morning and understand everything. I wish I could be like all the big people in the church, standing and kneeling and praying and understanding everything." p. 201 "Seamus likes me to tell him what I'm reading. He says that story about Mr. Ernest Bliss is a made-up story because no one in his right mind would have to go to a doctor over having too much money and not eating his egg though you never know. It might be like that in England. You'd never find the likes of that in Ireland. If you didn't eat your egg here you'd be carted off to the lunatic asylum or reported to the bishop." p. 202 "At night I lie in bed thinking about Tom Brown and his adventures at Rugby School and all the characters in P. G. Wodehouse. I can dream about the red-lipped landlord's daughter and the highwayman, and the nurses and nuns can do nothing about it. It's lovely to know the world can't interfere with the inside of your head." p. 285 "I have to look in the dictionary to find out what a virgin is. I know the Mother of God is the Virgin Mary and they call her that because she didn't have a proper husband, only poor old St. Joseph. In the Lives of the Saints the virgins are always getting into trouble and I don't know why. The dictionary says, Virgin, woman (usually young woman) who is and remains in a state of inviolate chastity. Now I have to look up inviolate and chastity and all I can find here is that inviolate means not violated and chastity means chaste and that means pure from unlawful sexual intercourse. Now I have to look up intercourse and that leads to intromission, which leads to intromittent, the copulatory organ of any male animal. Copulatory leads to copulation, the union of the sexes in the art of generation and I don't know what that means and I'm too weary going from one word to another in this heavy dictionary which leads me on a wild goose chase from this word to that word and all because the people who wrote the dictionary don't want the likes of me to know anything. All I want to know is where I came from but if you ask anyone they tell you ask someone else or send you from word to word." There are many more delightful passages like this in this wonderful book, and many of those pages will bring tears to your eyes. I would recommend this book to anybody who wants to learn about 20th century history because it puts a human face to the poverty and economical struggles of an era.
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A Reader posted a review at 2011-02-24 06:24:23.
(Language: English)
I loved this book. I felt completely wrapped up in the goings on of the family. I felt hope, despair, joy and sadness throughout the book. I wanted on many ocassions to grab Angela's hand and tell her that all would be well. Frank McCourt has an uncanny ability to throw you right into the middle of a drama unfolding, neither guessing what was but so anticipating what will be. I only wish there was more about what happened with everyone and what became of his father.
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eva posted a review at 2011-05-07 07:04:18.
(Language: English)
I wish Frank McCourt just stopped after this one. Great memoir, touching, funny, sad, eye-opening. But with such successs, inevitably the next book comes along. Next book doesn't compete. He had such a hard life as a youngster and you really wonder how he could have survived and become so successful. Charming book, makes you want to meet the man.
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