Rating: 
Summary: Angela's Ashes by Brittany Pierce
Review: Angela's Ashes is a tale of an American born boy who moves to Ireland as a small child. The book reveals his entire life. Francis McCourt, son of Angela and Malachy of Limerick Ireland. WIth a family if constantly changing numbers Francies battles through the worst challenges that the Irish slums can throw at him. Malachy is a depressed alcaholic who never holds a job for more than 2 weeks. Even when he does work he drinks away his pay check and leaves his family to suffer through life without his assistance. Angela is severly depressed and doesn't know herself well enough to know her own children or anyone else either. Francis is her first child, one of 8 he soon learned the value of being independent and remaining primarily self sufficient. Around age 7 he takes on the role of taking care of his younger siblings. With no heat, shoes, shabby clothes, little to no food and a life of eviction and confusion Francis rose above all the odds to concor his dreams of moving to America and making a better life for himself and his family if he couuld. By working hard and getting any job he could he tried to save everyone, espeacially himself.
I highly applaud this book and think that everyone should read it at least once in their life. The story reveals remarkable clarity and unique perspectives of a world seldom explored by choice and all too often overlooked. The new view of an old clishe flows with interesting details and remarkable feats. Life is constantly changing and this book reveals the details of survival in a harsh world where life is often taken for granted and things are worse than they appear. The inncent clarity on the bitter reality proves the true intention of the book. Not to change the reality of that life but to realize its there, perhaps not as obvious as it once was but it is still present and will remain so for a long time to come. The book wasn't perfect but it was the truth. The hardest part for me was reading Angela's views and decisions. I think her hope was sadly misplaced and often did more harm than good. Being optomistic in the worst of situations is admirable but providing false hope when life repeats failure again and again only hurts those people.
This book is one that almost anyone could read and the vocabulary level is simple yet precise. Anyone is capable of reading this book and easily understanding the text as well as the underlying messages. I would highly recomend this book for everyone and think that it is a highly inteligent and informative. It is truly a wonderful book and a welcome addition to anyone's personal library.
Rating: 
Summary: Angela's Ashes
Review: Angela's Ashes was not my favorite book at all. it was interesting in some points of the book, but there was too much "stuff" that just didn't need to be there. it would get really interesting and then he would talk for two or three pages about a lot of things that i didn't even need to know. it kind of made me upset that everytime she had a kid, one would die. after the third child, it really got old.it took me a long time to read it too. i wouldn't recomend this book for anyone who doesn't like to read a long book.
Rating:
Summary: Literary Devices in Angela's Ashes
Review: Angela's Ashes is a remarkable memoir in which the author, Frank McCourt, uses an abundance of literary devices to convey the dpressing story of his Irish Catholic childhood. Through his themes, contrasts, and symbolism, McCourt creates a memoir that remains with the reader and teaches us all about the circumstances of life that he faced growing up in Limerick, Ireland. The title of the book is derived from the ashes that fall from Angela's cigarettes and those in the fireplace that she stares at bleakly. The entire setting of the narrative feels draped in ash-dark, decrepit, weak, and lifeless. Angela's ashes also represent her crumbling hopes. Her dreams of raising a healthy family with a supportive husband have withered and collapsed, leaving her only with cigarettes and the smoldering ashes of a fire for warmth.
In addition to the symbolism of Angela's ashes, McCourt also provides the River Shannon. Frank's outlook on life matures during his childhood and adolescence. Initially, the river symbolizes Limerick's bleakness and the brooding desolation of his childhood. Frank associates the river with the endless rain that causes so much sickness. However, when Frank grows older, he begins to see the river as a route out of Limerick. As a result, it comes to a symbolic escape, movement and freedom. This is only one of the many literary devices employed by McCourt to strenghten his novel. Also through the many day-to-day situations in McCourt's life, he provides the reader with an emotional outlook on the Irish culture, at least of those who were impoverished. By setting up the entire narrative through literary devices, Frank McCourt has ultimately provided several layers to the story, which can be uncovered when the reader is ready and willing to contemplate the many meanings of his symbolic story.
Rating:
Summary: Angela's ashes
Review: Angela's Ashes is one of the best books I have ever read. It is a very fantastic novel about Frank McCourt's childhood in Ireland. Frank McCourt writes as if he's still a child. The reader feels with the little Frank. Sometimes the reader laughs about a funny scene and two minutes later he cries about the poor circumstances Frank lives in. So the novel evokes strong emotional feelings at the reader. To sum up : It's a must to read the book.You won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: What can be said?
Review: What can be said about this book? Great books, if they're really outstanding, can't be described. Such is the case with this one. I laughed out loud, I cried, and I had my heart broken. As if the story itself weren't enough, the sheer poetry of the writing combines with this incredible tale to produce a wonderful and heart-felt reading experience. If I had to pick three books in the world I would take with me to a desert island, this would be one of them. Also recommended: McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD
Rating:
Summary: THE BEST BOOK IVE EVER READ
Review: Simply, an irresistable book you can not stand to put down for one moment. A journey of hardship, courage, and strength, told through the eyes of a child. The naieve notions of Frank McCourt will have you in stitches. A MUST READ!
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Memoir
Review: This is an autobiography that made me want to write my own. It's so wonderfully written until I cried and laughed at the same time. He's like singing his sadness. Telling a story like a poetry.
I never felt this way but it's like euphoria that only can be felt when a book strike a chord
Rating:
Summary: Ten stars. Laugh thru your tears
Review: I have friends who found it impossible to finish Angela's Ashes because they found it relentlessly depressing with its heavy themes of aching poverty, absent drunken loving father and long-suffering mother - classic themes, it seems, in Irish literature.
But in spite of the truth of those parts of the story, it's impossible to finish this book without feeling a sense of triumph for the human spirit, even when surrounded by the realities of McCourt's Irish childhood and young adolescence.
It works, I think, because he writes the entire book in the child's voice - not an easy task to pull off, but he succeeded. And a child, of course, doesn't have much against which to hold up his own life; it's all he knows. So McCourt never comes across as sounding whiney, bitter, jealous, or put-upon.
Scene after hilarious scene is interspersed with real heartbreaking and harrowing and demeaning eqisodes, but the overall feeling I was left with was joy.
Rating:
Summary: Enthralling Hardship
Review: Frank McCourts ANGELA'S ASHES relays the adolescent hardships of a poverty-stricken life. This novel serves to portray the aggravation of an alcoholic father who spends the little money the family has on alcohol, and ultimately leaves the family completely penniless. An underlying idea of the novel shows the satiric view of the Roman Catholic Church in which McCourt was raised. Throughout McCourt's lifelong struggle to save enough money to return to America, he faces many and is confronted with many problems in his everyday life. The novel brings to life the inhumanity of the life lived in poverty, with the natrual regularity of death and disease, and the despair of having to steal for food to live. McCourt adequately relates his views of the difference between classes, his view of pompous Irish schoolmasters, and his idealistic view of America. This is a heartening yet sometimes depressing read that allows the reader to relate to the overall strife of human existence, and shows the extraordinary will to succeed of a young boy trying to overcome his circumstances with dignity and character. McCourt's novel is inspiring, though-provoking, and heart-felt. This novel is a must-read. It is a literary jewel.
Rating: 
Summary: Angela's Ashes
Review: It's a miracle Frank McCourt survived all the tragedies of his upbringings to compose the story, Angela's Ashes. The memoir of his oppressed childhood demonstrated that life should not be taken for granted, the negligible things deserve appreciation. The story was vividly written making the reader able to emotionally feel the experiences of his misfortunate childhood. Born in Brooklyn he was the eldest of seven children, though only four reached the age of three. As the family moves from New York to Ireland in hopes of a more prosperous future the situations continually deteriorate. Living off the dole with random employment the family has just enough to barely stay alive. Poverty drives Angela to accept charity from the Saint Vincent De Paul Society while Malachy's addictive drinking habit nearly destroys the McCourt's. Frank related illnesses that occurred on his first communion and confirmation as bad omens and he hated carrying the sins of life upon his shoulders. This brought him to the assumption that the worse scenario of life was being brought up as an Irish Catholic boy. In Conclusion, Angela's Ashes was a realistic recollection of what life in Ireland was like for the poverty stricken population in the 1940's. It was a well written book yet very depressing to read how anyone could have survived under these conditions.
|
