Rating: 
Summary: A Pulitzer Prize for This?
Review: Rarely do I stop reading a book before I finish, but after I had read about a third of Angela's Ashes, I couldn't take it any more.Up to that point, I thought, "This Frank McCourt fellow must be the smartest man who ever lived" because of his detailed descriptions of what happened to him when he was two, three or five years old. But when I got to the part about his carrying a hog head around for about 10 pages, I stoppped. If the man had said in the introduction that he embellished some and relied on what others told him, that would have been fine; instead he presents everything as fact. Think about your childhood. Can you remember 1/100th of the details that McCourt apparently has at the tip of his tongue -- or fingers? Give me a break. If this book is worthy of the Pulitzer Prize, we all are in trouble.
Rating: 
Summary: Engaging reading
Review: Obviously, and rather slyly, Frank McCourt informs us that reading about a happy childhood isn't worth our time. Geez, with all the hype about the misery portrayed in the book, I would have expected the majority of McCourt children to be have been wiped out. Instead, the grim reaper gets only 3 out of 7, and the reader feels cheated. Okay, maybe not that cheated. So, McCourt's memoir treats us to 360+ pages of misery. Starvation. Desperation. Drunkenness. Classism. It would all be pretty unbearable, except that there's the sly humour poking out here and there. Can we really trust Frank? He knows that the more miserable he can make his life the more credibility he has. He treats us to a variety of scenes, many of which we've seen before, in, oh, Oliver Twist, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All, Rachel and Her Children. It's all very fresh though. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt -- either his life was appallingly miserable, with enough Irish charm and humour to make up for the lack of nutritious sustenance; or McCourt himself has enough charm and humour to repackage a few dozen literary cliches as a tragic but uplifting memoir. Either way, I'm never touching a Guiness ever again. And I'll probably finish 'Tis pretty soon. And I'll still dock McCourt for failing to use quotation marks -- an annoying device that fails to communicate anything worth the reading confusion it causes.
Rating: 
Summary: Okay, but written for Americans
Review: Simply put, this book was written for Americans. It does not convey the hardships the Irish endured as they happened. The authors storytelling is repetitive babble, but the storyline was okay. However, if you want to read a good Irish book choose something written by an author who still lives and always has live in Ireland. There are many other great Irish literature works.
Rating:
Summary: Keith trashes Angela's Ashes...
Review: McCourt certainly succeeds in being the ultimate hypocrite in this blithering drivel that he somehow managed to publish. He has taken the stereotypical Irish cry of woe and misery and turned it into a dollar bill. A... tale (notice I didn't utilize a word which would indicate any form of truth) is told in this story that summarizes childhood memories of an Irish kid who returned to Ireland from the United States with his mother, father and siblings during the American Great Depression. One page after another chronicles a ludicrous concoction of day after day misery. A family combats the results of the alcoholic addictions of an irresponsible father and his blatant disregard for the support of his own family. This father figure is continually reminding his family throughout that his and his family's perpetual misfortunes are the result of being nothing but a poor, downtrodden Irishman in a cruel, cruel world, not his own irresponsibility. McCourt's father maintains his cry of woe and pleads for sympathy throughout the story. My observation notes that the father never finds sympathy or financial gains as a result of these cries. His son, Frank McCourt sure did! I find this mournful saga to be nothing more than pure hypocrisy at its best. The very same poor-cry that Frank McCourt again and again criticizes his father for relying on, he, himself adopts in order to gain the sympathy of foolish book-buyers such as ourselves. I find the story entirely unbelievable and that McCourt relies heavily on embellishment to concoct this book. Either this is a creation of embellishment or he has the best and most thorough memory of any pre-pubescent boy on earth. I find the detail that is acknowledged in actual conversations between people that happened some sixty years ago to be entirely and unequivocally unbelievable. In summary, I would suggest that dear reader not support McCourt's cause by spending a nickel of your hard-earned money on his book. It would only offer hope to those that believe that cries of disdain will earn sympathy and even better... easy money!
Rating: 
Summary: 'Tis Great
Review: Of course after months on the best seller lists and millions of copies having been sold, everyone has heard of Angela's Ashes. I have owned the book for a long time, and just recently decided to read it, but it was a wonderful read. I liked the informal and personal style McCourt writes with, that was only a small part of the book's effect. I learned a lot about immigrant's in America, conditions that the poor lived in here and in Irealand, and about family structure in a time when family values was not a buzz word like it is today. The characters in the story come to life and it McCourt makes it possible to relate to them and understand them. It is a wonderful book and one that I do not think a personal library should be without.
Rating:
Summary: Tragically real
Review: I've put off reading Angela's Ashes for a year after it's publication as the word from friends whose literary taste I trust made me feel that I wasn't in the right frame of mind to tackle this story.As the product of a parochial school education(in junior school),I got angrier and angrier as I relived the cruelty of the Irish nuns who strapped fear into small children and then terrorised them with the nightmare- producing stories of the persecution and martyrdom of early christians(except that they were ALWAYS referred to a Catholics!) To add to his dreadful,poor little life,Francis had the added burden of an alcoholic father who would rather drink his wages than feed his starving,malnourished children and a well-meaning but ineffectual mother who produced babies regularly,only to see them die. I realise that this is a very emotional book and,undoubtedly a frighteningly true version of a terrible life,but I still wanted to kick it across the room to quieten my old anger!
Rating:
Summary: Oh My lord, look at me, I am a mess!
Review: THIS book was so good it made me cry. Haha, it was good in a tone of a child, a tone of an adult, and shows some maturity and things McCourt relaized as a kid. It's a good memoir that will add to you spiritually, and technically. I have grown through this book, and I believe that I've learned easy lessons from it. It will make you realize so many forgotten things about life... not to mention, that his writing techniques are absolutely wonderful. I bravo this book.
Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing
Review: Frank McCourt piles on so many examples of the overwhelming poverty he experienced during his childhood that I almost put down the book in despair after reading just forty pages. I'm glad that I didn't. Despite the misery of his childhood, McCourt's memoir includes a number of lively and humorous vignettes. Two of my favorites are his the account of his attempts at Irish dancing, and the hilarious description of Frank's ill-fated first Communion. Nevertheless, McCourt does not mask his anger at the institutions that failed him and his dyfunctional family. School teachers (with one exception) were uninspiring, church people shut the door in his face or expected the poor to grovel for handouts, government officials lacked empathy. McCourt doesn't fall into the trap of over-generalization, though. Most people, despite their flaws, have their redeeming qualities in McCourt's account. Most notably, his hard-drinking, criminally irresponsible father also told beautiful stories, regaling Frank with tales of Irish heroes. No hero himself, McCourt's father passed his gift for telling an enthralling story to his son.
Rating: 
Summary: After a re-read
Review: I have just finished re-reading "AA" for a book club and I must say I was less impressed the second time. A lot of the incidents now strike me as "mythic": stern attitude of the Church, love encounter with the sick girl, escape to USA. Almost a quest motif. That is not to say that the book wasn't at all interesting but the second time through I began to notice things. A great work of literature for me can open up to me with each new reading, open up with something new/hidden/outsanding/astonishing. But I would like to answer the reader from Ireland. This is not "Irish" writing at all. McCourt spent years as a writing teacher at a NYC high school. This is American literature, pure and simple, simple enough to play to the heart strings. When I think of Irish writers, I think of Yeats, Joyce, Mabinogion, Flann O'Briens' novels and newpaper columns.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Read
Review: McCourt does an excellent job writing in the tone of a child. His memoirs makes the reader appreciate what he/she has. It opened my eyes to a world I could never imagine. I recommend it, especially for summer reading.
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