Frank McCourt's Memoirs "Angela's Ashes": An Autobiographical Journey Through Poverty and Adversity

Rubbish: No issues.

United Kingdom on Oct 19, 2023

Cathy Garcia: I couldn't put the book down.
Its a fast read.

United States on Sep 22, 2023

Fearless: Among the best memoirs ever written.
Classic.

India on Sep 07, 2023

Cliente Amazon: El libro llevaba tiempo en querer leerlo, me ha encantado porque se lee fácilmente y el autor cuenta una serie de anécdotas de su vida en la Irlanda pobre, a pesar de las penurias tienen tintes cómicos.

Spain on Jul 24, 2023

Senthil Kumar S: I first heard about “Angela’s Ashes” from The New York Times’ best 50 memoirs. Though there were 50, I narrowed it down to 6. Angela’s Ashes is one of them. I’m glad I picked it. Also, I didn’t know that it has won the Pulitzer Prize, so there was an extra layer of welcome to read the book.
The book is kind of slow to start with even though the narrative is fast. It starts with a brief history of the family. After that it is poverty all the way through and how he and his family scrape through. Despite the never-ending poverty, what makes it readable in the richness in writing. The book is very engaging and only half way through the book, I decided that I need to read his sequel, “’Tis”. Also, the sequel’s sequel “The Teacher Man”. The only other time I ever wanted a sequel was to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” movie.
At a chapter, when he is 13 going on 14 and he and his family is living in another person’s house, there are some really humiliating and embarrassing scenes which I bet will leave you teary eyed. But also, the writer doesn’t write it seriously. It’s not used as a crescendo moment. It’s the first time where I really...

India on Jul 17, 2019

J. Springer: Book review: “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt...First & foremost, this book taught me that there are levels of poverty. For example, there’s regular poverty, Irish poverty, Irish Catholic poverty, and (worst of all) Irish Catholic poverty in the 1940s. The book is an autobiography on Frank McCourt growing up in Limerick, Ireland. The book won the Pulitzer Prize and, quite frankly, he deserved it...as sad as it is, it is very well written, flows nicely, and keeps the reader wanting more. Some of my favorite highlights from the book:
1. “As a child, I thought a balanced diet was bread and tea, a solid and a liquid.” Frank McCourt
2. Frank McCourt had beautiful handwriting—a “fine fist” as they said in the old country—and he wrote Angela’s Ashes in longhand.
3. I had heard the term Soupers but never knew what it meant: “We had the soupers in the Famine. The Protestants went round telling good Catholics that if they gave up their faith and turned Protestant they’d get more soup than their bellies could hold and, God help us, some Catholics took the soup, and were ever after known as soupers.”
4. All this time, I’ve been saying Jesus,...

United States on Nov 14, 2017

Mr. D. James: McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes

In 2016 Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes will be 20 years old, but it is still as fresh as it was when first published. After retiring from teaching in America McCourt began sorting his memoirs of childhood poverty in Limerick in the early Twentieth Century. The book, which he never expected to sell more than a few hundred copies took him a little over a year to complete. It won the Pulitzer Prize and a cascade of other awards. It topped bestseller charts for more than two years. Only Charles Dickens has managed to capture the general reader’s imagination like McCourt.

Told entirely from the child’s perspective, the narrative succeeds in drawing the reader into a charmed circle of listeners to a tale of poverty and survival against the odds. Frankie was given up for dead in the fever hospital, refused absolution by priests because he cannot abstain from masturbating and hence is not in a fit state to be absolved. He finds an ‘easy’ priest, but the minister falls asleep during his confession.
Throughout the book, the Catholic religion controls the minds of rich amd poor alike, but the rich have other comforts; the poor...

United Kingdom on Sep 26, 2015

Fyrecurl: The best book I've read this year. If Neil Simon were to have written a novel it may have well looked like this book. A unique voice and style applying humor in all of the right ways for a reader to absorb the sad tragedy of growing up poor, Irish, and Catholic during the depression years, in America, and Ireland. Frank McCourt is able to overcome the pathos of his poignant, sad, and often disturbing memoir of growing up as the oldest son of a poor Irish Catholic family, through use of voice. In Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt presents his memoir though the limited first person view of a young boy. He creates comic relief in using the voice of a small child, as he grows up, first in New York, and then in Limerick, Ireland, during the time of the depression, and its aftermath. McCourt presents a tragic account of his family that would generally overwhelm any reader, unless presented through the eyes of a child, who often does not realize the hardship he has undergone, and whose innocent, limited view allows him (and the reader) to keep going. McCourt pushes the reader through the grief of near starvation, the upbringing by an alcoholic father, misguided mother, loss of younger...

United States on Apr 18, 2013