Rating: 
Summary: YUCK! Don't bother.
Review: I looked forward to reading this book because of all the hype and 5-stars from the other readers, but I did not get past the first 104 pages. I knew I might not like it after the first chapter, but kept plugging away because I thought "it would get better." Unfortunately, I could not take it anymore and it will go on my graveyard book shelf. This author just could not get past the father who drank to much and the mother not knowing how to take care of her children to the extent that she did not know they were sick. It revolved around the younger children dying and the older ones starving. Eating milk, fried bread, water and sugar, and eggs and hearing about a drunk father and mother unable to do anything while her children died around her are the focuses of this book. It did not matter if the location was Brooklyn or Ireland, it was still the same monotonous plot. I'm sorry, but it is not very interesting to me.
Rating: 
Summary: A stirring portrait of the slums of Limerick
Review: Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt's first published memoir, describes his impoverished childhood while growing up in Limerick, Ireland. The memoir follows McCourt through his tumultous childhood and adolescent years as a Limerick "laner"The memoir begins in New York City, before his mother and father move their family, which is shrinking in size because of death, back to Ireland. McCourt continues to nararate his story straightforwardly and frankly, sprinkling the text with various Irish folk songs (Roddy McCorley, etc.) and poetry while also describing his love for literature, (which becomes his only refuge from poverty besides a distant and confused relationship with the Catholic religion) Frank contends with the ever-present threat of death, disease, starvation, a ever-depressed mother and alcoholic father. He also struggles with the common problems of young boys and discovering the mysteries of "manhood" and the opposite sex. McCourt very obviously has great literary talent, as shown by his ability to narrate and weave past memories together ironically, intelligently, and stylishly, to form a great literary work. All in all, "Angela's Ashes" is an wonderful book that deserves the great praise it has won.
Rating:
Summary: Moving and evocative
Review: Wow - I'm still speechless after reading this book. When it was described to me, I sort of dreaded it - poverty, hunger, filth, alcoholism - not uplifting topics. But told by Mr. McCourt in a faithful childlike voice, these subjects while still grim take on a factual bitterless tone. Can't wait to read 'Tis.
Rating: 
Summary: A very dramatic, but also interesting book!
Review: In this book you see the miserable life in a Irish town. It touched my heart to see in that childhood. It's remarkable how Frank could survive in that misery, and also be a more or less good person after all. A hard life in the middle of many others in that time and town. Daniela & Stafanie
Rating:
Summary: A poignant, touchingly brilliant memoir
Review: It takes talent to create a story that is both happy and sad, but Frank McCourt does exactly that with the story of his poor Irish Catholic childhood. The reader cannot help but feel the pain, confusion and disappointment McCourt faced. Starting at the age of four, McCourt faces not only the typical difficulites of childhood, but also poverty, hunger, and his father's alcoholism. At the same time, McCourt's innocence and naivete, as well as his own hope, gives the reader hope for him. McCourt uses the language of a child to convey the destitution his family faced. In any other context, his writing style would not be appropriate. However, in this case, the streams of thoughts and innocent words transport the reader to a child-like frame of mind, making the story vivid and real. Through McCourt's innocent eyes, the reader gets to know all of the characters in the story. One sees how his father plunges the family further into poverty with his alcoholism, and how his mother must resort to begging in order to have a few scraps of food. One also sees how McCourt and his siblings stay close together and share the struggle. With each chapter, the reader hopes McCourt will find a way out of his situation. This book is touching and poignant from beginning to end. It makes one realize that no matter what difficulties they may face, the human spirit can triumph over great adversity.
Rating:
Summary: McCourt tells a sad tale through eyes of wonder
Review: This piece of literature was truly amazing. It is told without hiding anything, revealing startling demons about McCourt's past. However, he tells the book with a remarkable sense of optimism which makes it easier to get through and hard to put down.
Rating:
Summary: World of weeping
Review: "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.132 Through his childhood biography, McCourt created a novel that was not only true but was also real. One family. One miserable family struggling through life at the bottom. McCourt's words were a steady stream of hardship, hurdles and grief. I admire this work. The novel was a very honest look into its author's soul and of his outlook on life.
Rating:
Summary: long and uneventful filled with too many repetitive songs an
Review: I was loaned this book that I had seen everywhere and the cololess cover certainly did not attract me to the book. But since it was on tape and I had along trip, I starrted it and found it very slow going and totally unentralling. But I kept with it and found McCourt a very good writer but too full of limericks and song for a non-Irish. His accent and reading intonation were delightful but it is not a book I would care to read or see the movie. Even though the poverty was shocking, I did not come away learning more about a subject than before I had read it. It feels like yet another "tragic Oprah" story......
Rating:
Summary: A Triumph of Language and of Spirit
Review: Frank McCourt had six brothers and sisters, all baptized in the same lace dress. Only three survived their brutishly poor childhood in Brooklyn and Limerick. Frank not only survived; he triumphed--and he produced this work about the triumph of spirit and the triumph of language. McCourt is a great storyteller, and these stories about his life through adolescence are wonderfully written. It may even be that his ability to detach and see his life as a tale to be retold accounts for his triumph over his station. But make no mistake about it: these are stories. It is impossible for the reader to tell where literal truth--even remembered truth--ends and where the embroidered story begins. At some level, perhaps, it may not matter, because we love the audacity and freshness of each of the stories so much. Whether or how much of it is apocryphal is hardly relevant, since it is so well told. In essence, this is the adult version of how Mr. McCourt would have, should have, must have seen the world as a child. One theory of human dynamics says that we fulfill our perception of others' expectations of us. Frank McCourt thinks we think he is a witty, resilient, triumphant storyteller. And so he is. I'm just not so sure that we know what he really felt as a kid growing up in Limerick, which is where the lace dress in which he and his siblings were baptized was made.
Rating:
Summary: Two Thumbs Up for The Memoir of Frank McCourt
Review: Angela's Ashes is the wonderful memoir of Frank McCourt, born during the depresson in Brooklyn, New York. He was the son to emabattled, Irish immigrants and raised to endure poverty after moving to Limerick, Ireland. It is a story of abuse, neglect, and tragedy. Yet Frank, the eldest son, lives to tell his tale with humor, eloquence, and remarkable compassion. The book is deeply moving, being such a combination of many melancholy and humorous feelings. Angela's Ashes: A Memoir is nothing short of a future classic.
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