Rating: 
Summary: Powerful & Provocative Portrait Of An Irish Boyhood!
Review: As someone who spent the majority of his formative childhood living within the realms of a struggling blue-collar Irish-American Catholic neighborhood housing project, much of the atmosphere and flavor so memorably and powerfully described in this best-selling memoir seems like familiar territory, from the hard-drinking and somewhat remote and indifferent fathers to the sainted mothers, from the raucous black humor to the spasms of terrible drama and tragedy, often visited on helplessly impoverished children. Yet Frank McCourt manages to display a unusually colorful and quite unique descriptive power to the florid retelling of this life lived under conditions of extreme privation and misery, a life which he largely describes in terms so dismal, dark and devoid of hope that it is remarkable to witness the degree of grace, resilience, and good humor that he so often brings to bear. It is this most prominent feature of his creative writing that gives such a powerful testimony to his ability as a writer. Like James Joyce's personal glimpses into Irish lives in his classic series of short stories, "The Dubliners", McCourt evokes the suffocating and smarmy atmosphere of flagrant poverty, to the point that I often found the story difficult to read. Thus, regardless of how well he illustrates the ways in which he and his family struggled to overcome the circumstances, it was, for me at least, often difficult reading. For any of us who have actually lived under such circumstances of privation, these powerfully drawn recollections can be challenging and painful to recall. And while I would never suggest that my own experiences approach the extremes of want and squalor described herein, I took a long time to finally work my way into the portions of the book where the McCourt brothers finally triumph based on their American citizenry. While the tone of the memoir is sometimes downbeat and sullen, the progress of these two young pilgrims toward a life of greater promise is one that gains ballast as we progress toward the end. The memoir is, as one has come to expect, full of the usual Irish complaints, from the egregious and often outrageous alcoholism of the father and Irish men in general to the full McCourt treatment regarding the so-called Irish troubles and the unmitigated perfidy of the dreaded English. Having heard all this throughout my fifty years, it finally becomes tiresome, boring and irrelevant to hear all the highly polished and crudely embellished litanies again and again here. We who are either Irish or of Irish ancestry must learn to live with what we have, to do the best we can to make the most of what we find our existential circumstances may be, and I for one would hope that the reading of books like this, books which faithfully chronicle the consequences of all the particulars of traditional Irish working class culture, would act to mollify the most extreme of these conditions and save the next generation of young Irish men and women from its manifest dysfunctions.
Rating:
Summary: A taste of reality
Review: For months, I heard the name "Angela's Ashes" thrown around, and finally bought the book to read while on a trip. I'd talked to several people before hand, who made it quite clear to me that the book was incredibly sad and depressing and to be sure to have a box of kleenex close at hand. I was reassured that despite my tears, I would find the book wonderful. Well, I do find Angela's Ashes to be a wonderful book, and yes, the poverty in which they lived was depressing, however, what I loved most about this book was the fact that these people had a sense of what it means to survive, to be alive, and be thankful for what we have. Though they lived in poverty, there was an incredible sense of community amongst all the residents of Limerick, the town in which Frank McCourt grew up, and there was always help to be had. Small comforts came from a cup of tea, or a cigarette, something that we take for granted in our lavish, western lifestyles. Though materially Frank had very little, he had a wealth of experiences that surpasses anything we can buy. I am grateful that he was able to recount his "miserable" childhood with such humor, and that he was able to humble those of us who are more fortunate.
Rating:
Summary: extremely moving.
Review: I found this book to be a learning curve to myself and my family as we have almost all the things in life we could want and to read of somebody going through life with nothing really to look forward to was amazingly moving. I wanted to tell my family about all the problems this little boy faced with having no food some days and living with a father who would rather drink than put food in his childrens mouths, the reality of it being that we are so much more spoilt in our home. I cried and laughed my way through this book and would read it again and again.
Rating: 
Summary: GET INTO A CHILD'S MIND!
Review: Born into a poor Irish Catholic family, Frank grows up in the slums of Manhattan and Limerick facing problems such as a drunk father, family tragedies, consumption and poverty. Although this book gets a little boring sometimes, it is quite exciting cause at any time one wants to know what happens next to Frank and his family. The author Frank McCourt did an excellent job on writing about his childhood and how he went through it. JUST LIVE THE LIFE OF A CHILD THAT FACED PROBLEMS EVERY SINGLE DAY YOURSELF.
Rating:
Summary: GET INTO A CHILD'S MIND!
Review: Born into a poor Irish Catholic family, Frank grows up in the slums of Manhattan and Limerick facing problems such as a drunk father, family tragedies, consumption and poverty. Although this book gets a little boring sometimes, it is quite exciting cause at any time one wants to know what happens next to Frank and his family. The author Frank McCourt did an excellent job on writing about his childhood and how he went through it. JUST LIVE THE LIFE OF A CHILD THAT FACED PROBLEMS EVERY SINGLE DAY YOURSELF.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written but boring
Review: I found this to be a well written book but hopelessly boring. Just when you think his life couldn't have been any worse as a child, things got worse. There was no end to it. I pushed through to the end and was dissatisified with the hollow feeling this book left me with. Again, if a depressing book with little plot variation interests you I would recommend this one because McCourt turned out a quality product. I just need a little more variety in the plot to satisfy me.
Rating:
Summary: Glued to my hands
Review: I could hardly put this book down when I started reading it. A wonderfully crafted memoir of an Irish family living in poverty, Angela's Ashes is funny, charming and depressing all in one.
Rating:
Summary: Frank gets the nickel.
Review: Charles Dickens once said, "In the little world in which children have their existence, whoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only a small injustice the child can be exposed to; but the child is small; and its world is small." Angela's Ashes amounts to a brilliant recollection of childhood injustice which is indeed... LARGE! As I read the book, I was appalled at the depth of poverty that Frank McCourt and his family endured, and yet, I can't count the number of times I actually laughed out loud at the "way" in which the story is told. I've never read anything so simultaneously light and weighty. McCourt is witty, and is always in character, and that character is the child who was an eye-witness to every event. (An intriguing, fiercely narrative writing style is consistent throughout the book. ie., there are never any quotation marks). The story is a powerfully moving disclosure of the perils of alcoholism. If it wasn't for the fact that Frank's father could not walk PAST a pub, the family would not have been so destitute. What little money Malachy McCourt earns is forever spent on alcohol, and the amazing thing is that it is spent shamelessly. Mother and children practically starve while dad staggers home in a drunken stupor night after night. Frank says of his father's false promises... "He'll give us a nickel for ice cream if we promise to die for Ireland and we promise but we never get the nickel." Injustice. In my opinion, the redeeming majesty of this memoir is that through it we learn a wondrous fact... that shamelessness, irresponsibility, and stupidity do not necessarily have to be handed down to the next generation. Frank broke the mold, and chose self-awareness as his aspiration. I believe that the crucial turning point in his life came when, at the age of eleven he was convalescing at a hospital and came to the conclusion that "it's lovely to know the world can't interfere with the inside of your head." As readers of Angela's Ashes, we become the grateful recipients of this precocious revelation. Mr. McCourt has received much recognition for his book, and all of it is deserved. I have no idea what he has gained monetarily from its publication, but somehow I think it's a bit more than his aforesaid promised nickel. Way to go. You are an inspiration to the world.
Rating:
Summary: Laughter and Tears
Review: I almost never seem to read bestsellers while they are bestsellers. Maybe it's all the hype that puts me off. Nothing can be that good, I think. But, Angela's Ashes is. This is a book that truly lives up to all the media hype (and the Pulitzer Prize) lavished upon it and, surprisingly, deserves even more. Angela's Ashes tells the story of one of the world's most dysfunctional families through the eyes of a child. This is a family crippled by alcoholism, poverty, misery, illness and just about every other sort of deprivation one could possibly imagine. Yet, its characters remain heroic, resilient and even humorous. In the second paragraph, the author recalls, "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood; the happy childhood is hardly worth your while." An unnerving but wonderful beginning; I have no doubt that these very lines will be remembered verbatim for many, many years to come. The author, Frank McCourt, is the oldest son in this collapsed, poverty-stricken family. His childhood, the one from which he managed to extract so very much, is a childhood where nightmares disguise themselves as reality and walk about in broad daylight. Angela's Ashes begins a month after Black Tuesday, the beginning of the Great Depression, in Brooklyn, New York. Angela Sheehan, newly-arrived from Ireland is taken with Malachy McCourt at a neighborhood party. Malachy is a man possessed of a "hangdog" look, having just spent the three previous months in jail, but Angela, unfortunately, is attracted to this "hangdog" look and she and Malachy experience what the author calls a "knee-trembler." Predictably, a child is conceived; a hasty marriage follows, then alcohol, drunkenness, debt, destitution and, also predictably, more children. In fact, after just four years of marriage, the McCourt's have five children. Five children who are victims of infection, disease, malnutrition, parental neglect and abuse. Angela's relatives do the only thing they can to help; they send money for the McCourt family to return to Ireland. The year 1934 finds the McCourt's back in Limerick, Ireland and the memoir then covers the years up until 1948. Malachy McCourt does find work in Ireland, in fact, he finds many jobs as he never seems to be able to hold onto any one of them for more than three weeks at a stretch. His alcoholism, even by tolerant Irish standards at the time, is "beyond the beyonds," and he creates havoc for his family, leaving death and destruction in his wake. At the age of ten, the author is hospitalized with typhoid fever for more than three months. Something wonderful does happen during this hospitalization, however. The young Frank McCourt meets the fourteen year old Patricia Madigan, a girl who is dying of diphtheria. It is Patricia who introduces Frank to both poetry and Shakespeare, subjects that will become lifelong loves. Frank tells Patricia that Shakespeare's words are like having jewels in your mouth. Some of those jewels must have been lavished on Angela's Ashes because this book, and especially this section of the book, contains some of the most elegant and eloquent, passages ever written, passages that encompass a cadence and prose of which Shakespeare would have been proud. In fact, the book^s most touching scenes all occur outside the family setting: in the hospital, at school, during moments of tender young love. There can be do doubt that Malachy McCourt suffered from a surfeit of both Irish pride and Irish whiskey, a deadly combination when taken to extremes and take them to extremes he did. Malachy intimidated both his wife and his children with demands for "dignity and respect." He was a man who drank his paycheck before he ever got home, who then indulged in melancholy Irish ballads and stumbled into his children's bedroom to force them to swear they would "die for Ireland." He isn't really hateable, though, as he seems to be a man who could simply never make the connection between his horrible behavior and the misery he inflicted upon his family. We want nothing more than to sit him down in a chair, sober, and make him repeat the Gaelic proverb: Is milis da ol e ach is searbl da ioc e (It is sweet to drink but bitter to pay for) until he finally learns to live by its dictates. Of course, Malachy McCourt never learned to live by this proverb nor any other; his severe alcoholism was made even worse by his inability to see the world in anything but black and white. His lifelong hatred for the English, whom he viewed as his eternal foe, reaches back some 800 years; he never tires of delivering final judgments or pontifications; his follies are grandiose but his deeds are spare and wanting. Only when sober and with his children (not surprisingly, these times are few) is he able to transcend the demons in his own soul and become a genuine Irish storyteller and spinner of tall and fabulous tales that would cause even Scheherazade embarrassment. The author likens his father to the Holy Trinity; Malachy is definitely not divine, but he does have three separate and distinct identities: the man who quietly reads the newspaper in the morning; the man who tell fabulous stories and legends at night; and the man who carries about him the indelible smell of whiskey. Sigmund Freud must have had Malachy McCourt in mind when he said that the Irish were the only people who could not be helped with psychoanalysis. While Angela's Ashes is a first-rate memoir (one of the best ever written, as far as I'm concerned), it is also an astonishingly detailed portrayal of the Irish poor in the 1930s and 1940s. McCourt beautifully and deftly ties the happenings of his own family into the happenings of his neighborhood and the happenings of the entire Irish race. The language employed in Angela's Ashes is evocative and brings forth strong and lasting images. The tone, however, remains conversational and easy-to-read. This is a forthright book that tells an unvarnished tale that is captivating, harrowing and humorous. While Angela's Ashes is a memoir, it reads more like an extremely well-crafted novel of the highest order, bringing forth genuine laughter and tears. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: I laughed, I cried.
Review: The McCourt brothers and their use of our shared language deserve every bit of attention they get. Frank tells stories of crushing poverty with such a lyrical witty writing style you almost forget to be sad, remember I said almost. This is an Ireland not of leprecauns and shamrocks, but death and hunger and desperation. A truly wonderful read if you have the stomach for it...hang in there for the happy ending.
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