Rating: 
Summary: An insightful and passionate autobiography
Review: This second work in the story of the Irish-American Frank McCourt is nothing short of wonderful. McCourt describes his travel to America in 1949 from Limerick, Ireland, where his family moved back to after first emigrating to Brooklyn several years before. McCourt struggles with American culture, financial difficulties, and yet manages to persevere. McCourt provides the reader with incredible details from his life, including his time in the Army during the Korean War and the difficulty of teaching in New York City. His prose is funny, insightful, and creates a true picture for the reader of the life of a recent immigrant to this country and the struggle to succeed. A wonderful book that is highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Another success for McCourt
Review: To be very honest, I did not know what to expect from this book after the majesty of Angela's Ashes. In reviewing some of the critics asessments, it appeared that Mr. McCourt had possibly failed to live up to his original work. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As a professional in the field of mental health, I found this book to be even more fascinating than than the first. The conflicts that play in this mans personality make compelling reading. The shadow of the tremendous poverty suffered in his early life, and how it impacts on his self esteem and the manner in which he regards all situations and people in his adult life is a pervasive presence in this book. The ambivalence he feels for his parents as he relates to them as an adult during their declining years holds messages and lessons for many of us who are torn in this manner. A sensitive, revealing work. This fellow has the touch with writing. A gift that his sainted Irish mother would be proud of. Frank...if you read this, please be assured that you have achieved what you always dreamed of....your book jackets will be framed and hung with the other great authors. Good luck to you....and keep writing.
Rating:
Summary: I cried towards the end of this one. It was so great.
Review: Tis was so ingeniously invented that I could not tear myself away from this msasterpiece and engrossing sequel to the smash starting prequel Angela's Ashes. Great reading in both books.
Rating:
Summary: The Dream You Wish You Hadn't Woken Up From
Review: I thought 'Tis was a magnificent book and a great complement to Angela's Ashes. Frank McCourt has many strengths. He has the ability to incorporate dialogue into his story and keep the flow extremely smooth. When reading 'Tis I felt like McCourt and all of his friends were acting out their lives in front of me. The images McCourt created were so vivid. Even though McCourt and I come from different backgrounds I could relate to many of his feelings, his uneasiness with dancing, his approach to education. I felt like his feelings were so honest, he included the "good" and "bad" things he felt, from being faithful to his mother to the women at the refugee camp. 'Tis is a story about human nature, with none of the facts or feelings left out, it is painfully honest. McCourt's humor is also unmistakable, his Irish blood shines through his writing! I enjoyed reading about his teaching experiences. I am a student, and I was reminded that teachers have families, pasts, and lives as well as their students. On completing the book, I read a review by Robert Sullivan (Vogue) that was a perfect example of how I felt throughout the book "...funny, sad as hell, written with sentences that seem to come from the dream you wish you hadn't woken up from..." The book's ending disturbed me in that I am still hungry to find out the next chapter of McCourt's life. I'm wondering what happened after Stuyvesant, what happened to Alberta? Maggie?
Rating: 
Summary: good book
Review: McCourt isn't as descriptive in certain situations as I wish he were. Sometimes he just isn't able to communicate what he is feeling or just doesn't try to. So, if he were put in an embarrassing situation, instead of feeling his embarrassment just by reading the story, you have to stop and think about how you would feel if you were put in a similar position. I really don't get why McCourt doesn't put quotes around dialogue, it seems to me like a cheap way to try and differentiate him from other writers that doesn't work. It is almost as if he faked going to NYU. Sometimes he tends to digress from the situation at hand and ramble on about stuff that is relevant to the story but in no way necessary to the development of the story. From the way this review is going, you are probably wondering why I rated it a four. Well, it is an incredible story, McCourt's life is like a never-ending story: there is always a new job, girl or other challenge to keep your attention. Basically, this is a great story in search of a good editing.
Rating:
Summary: Ragged Frank
Review: McCourt finished his first book rather shamelessly, returning as a young man to New York City. 'Tis a great country -- knowing that most of his readers are American. It's an uplifting, patriotic image, the young man returning to the land of dreams.Except maybe 'tisn't such a great country after all. Maybe it's just merely another ordinary country, with it's attendant racial, ethnic and class conflicts, all explored rather deftly in this second autobiographical volume. While I was skeptical of the authenticity of Angela's Ashes, 'Tis goes along way in filling up the holes and making the first book more, er, real. The consequences of his miserable childhood existence become evident, as Frank deals with his father's family, his own relationship with the bottle, etc. Nevertheless, with the help of some beneficient advisors, Frank learns to avoid extravagance, and saves a little money each week, after nobly setting aside a generous portion of his earnings for his destitute mother. His pluck and ingenuity help him to succeed in all his ventures, whether contracting as a maintenance engineer for the Biltmore hotel, or shaking down his reluctant high school students. In just a matter of a few decades, he has accumulated enough wealth that he proclaims himself to be Francis McCourt, Esq., a man of property. Well, okay, he inherited the downpayment for his brownstone from an eccentric neighbor, but there is the exciting sequence where he leaps off the Staten Island Ferry to save his drowning future wife. I'm sure that Horatio Alger would have been exceedingly proud of how young Frank conducted himself, especially after the very classy Civic Wedding sequence. Anyway, this book is a very necessary follow-up to Angela's Ashes. Some readers, their hearts ache for the poor miserable child in Liverpool, probably won't be able to handle the fact that he grows up, and proves to be very, excitedly, human. But for the bigger picture, you must read the second book.
Rating:
Summary: Tis a good book
Review: Angela's Ashes seemed to be the success, so I bought 'Tis just to see what all the fuss was about. This process usually lands me some pretty drafty and confusing books, but 'Tis was different. It actually caught my attention and made me yearn for more. Frank McCourt's thoughts fluttering from the traditional to the modern is addictive, as to read this book is to enjoy the thoughts he had. The reader is guided to think his thoughts and to challenge them privately. This was one of those "interactive" books that spawns thoughts on life and provides some decent insight as to what people back then were thinking or just giving the reader another viewpoint of the era. A few questions at the end of the book left me yearning for more answers. Well, you can't have the complete story while the character is still alive. But overall, it was a great book.
Rating:
Summary: The Wonderful Volume Two of Angela's Ashes
Review: If you've already read Angela's Ashes and have fallen in love with this voice and are longing for more of the same hardship tempered, don't-give-a-fiddler's-fart attitude, then go ahead and click buy this item right now. This is not so much a sequel as it is the second half of Angela's Ashes, McCourt's acclaimed first book. Rarely do I see a second book run so seemlessly into the first. This time, though, Frankie McCourt is not bogged down with the slop and mud of the Limerick burroughs, he's in America and Europe, working on the docks, applying for jobs at the insurance company, and studying with the rich Rhode Islanders with big breasts and blonde hair who come to New York for college. This adventure is his real adventure. Unlike Angela's Ashes, this adventure doesn't depress us until we want to go and join an Irish branch of the Peach Corp. This story reminds us constantly of the old scars McCourt carries from Limerick, but covers them up with neatly pressed army uniforms, wraps them over with NYU book covers, and occasionaly drowns them with a thick, black pint of beer in a New York bar. The language is the same, rich and wonderful. The character grows up and through his environment into a world of opportunity and maturity the reader never knew in Angela's Ashes. Every name of every character seems deeply rooted in pure joy of memory. The people in his life are alive with McCourt's writing. The men on the docks, for example, seem to look up from the page with gloomy eyes. Where Angela's Ashes explodes in an ephiphany of redemption, 'Tis shows us hope and moxy. It shows us a man we can use as a role model when we begin to think we are either in a terrible situation or in a terrible life. I am reminded of a scene where Frank (by this time a High School teacher) is so disappointed with his students' work that he throws papers he is grading off the ferry boat and into the wake of the water below. Those papers represent his past troubles, his battles with hunger, alcoholism, and poverty. Each one falls away into the water. I truly beleive that by the end of this book, Frank has learned to recognize the difference between true sorrows and those situations we just need to throw into the water and forget. This book is worth its weight in Guiness.
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious and whiny
Review: I just finished this book, and let me tell you, it was a chore reading it. I couldn't put Angela's Ashes down, but it took me weeks to plod through this one. Not only is the story not nearly as gripping, but McCourt seems to have lost the art of storytelling. It takes him pages to tell what could just as easily have been told in a paragraph or two. But what really turned me off was how he held a grudge against his father and even his mother, blaming them for his sorry state, as if his father was responsible for his drinking, his disappointing career, and his failed marriage. It's time to grow up, McCourt.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Angela's Ashes!
Review: "Tis" is no "Angela's Ashes", but if you came to care about Frank McCourt and his family in "Angela's Ashes", it's still worth a read. The story telling just isn't as engrossing, but how could it be? What mystified me was the unanswered questions. What happened with McCourt's eye condition? How did the prettiest girl on campus fall for the poor Irish guy with the bad eyes? How could he justify his drinking after what his father's drinking did to his family? Did I miss something? The dots didn't connect for me.
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