ANGELA'S ASHES

Rating:
Summary: MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOK
Review: Everytime I think of this book, I actually get the chillsbecause I loved it so much. McCourt's descriptions of not onlyLimerick but also of Brooklyn were wonderful. While I don't usually like humor in my books, I loved McCourt's humorous writing style. No one tells a story like Frank McCourt. It's so from the heart. Now the fact that I'm part Irish, lived in Brooklyn and am Catholic probably added to my enjoyment of this book. I do know that everyone I've recommended it to has loved it as much as I did. END

Rating:
Summary: Angelas Ashes
Review: This is an amazing piece of work.Frank McCourt is such a wonderful writter.I felt such an emotional attachment to all the charecters and so badly wanted to help them. This book is a reminder of the graditude we should all have in our lives.Bottom line, this book makes you feel and it works its way under your skin. A masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Read
Review: Frank McCourt has a unique writing style. He does a very good job of getting his points across. Some parts are hilarious and others are depressing, but all-in-all, it's worth well worth it.

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Summary: One too many mentions of overflowing outhouses
Review: Some of the charm of the child's tale is lost by adult McCourt's obsession with overflowing outhouses and the like.

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Summary: HOPE!
Review: Frank McCourt's perspective is incredible! He's innocent and honest, giving the full picture of events and still showing the little things that made him love his alcoholic, usually unemployed father. He shows the irony of ignorance: the wealthy people were ignorant to the abilities and intelligence of the poor because they weren't clean and their clothes were old and ragged. Yet, no obstacle or slamming door was able to deter him from supporting the family his father left behind and making his dream of returning to America come true.

If this book does anything for a reader, it is to show how much worse things could be and how any goal is attainable if you want it enough.

Rating:
Summary: IS THERE A WORD WORSE THAN WORST?
Review: What is with these five stars? Holy Guacamole if you say this was the "best book I ever read" I think you need a new life! Or some new books!

I gave this book a second chance, I gave a review two years ago asking "what the bloody frigg is all the fuss." And I repeat that phrase again! I tend to agree with a reviewer from Calif on Mar 18, who questions this "biographical" work. I can't imagine anyone remembering in such vivid, thorough detail, his life from the 30's.

The pages are filled with endless chatter! The beginning, middle, and ending had similar storytelling. You can't distinguish one from another, pages just run on and on. It is hard to know his age at times unless he points it out, like age 8 is really different from age 10. I forced myself, I repeat FORCED MYSELF to get through and gave up at the end chapters.

It is difficult to visualize and distinquish one even from another due to the excessive "dialogue". Literature? I doubt it! I asked five people who read it "what is the story about." Not one can tell me the sequence of the book, what it means, or if there is any substance. They just say "Oh it is depressing, sad! Duhhhh! I can't even imagine the movie being worth my precious time. Seems like the movie bombed, nothing said lately.

But, please people, give praise where it is due! This book was a pity!

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding production superbly narrated by the author.
Review: Angela's Ashes is a memoir which tells of Frank McCourt, born in Brooklyn during the Depression to recent Irish immigrants who search for a new life in the States. A child's survival of poverty and hardship in a brave new country makes for a winning account which comes alive under audio treatment, narrated by the author.

Rating:
Summary: The Spirit of McCourt
Review: Through the eyes of a child, gives an innocent prospective unreachable any other way. Laugh and cry simultaneously? Oh, you will. The uniquely fresh style McCourt exhibits is a delight. Triumph over adversity has never been said more eloquently, more honestly. Don't miss this gem!

Rating:
Summary: More than a hard times chronicle.
Review: After the death of his baby sister, Frank's family leave depression era New York City, to take up residence in the even more impoverished, pre-WW2, Limerick, in which his Northern Irish born father is not accepted despite 'doing his bit' for Ireland in the uprising. And so, the family, without any income except from what is gained through various charities poor-relief schemes, and occasional help from begrudging relatives, struggle to survive. A state not helped by Frank's alcoholic father, who can never hold a job, drinks the dole, and never sends any money back from England where he gets a full time job in a munitions factory during the war.

Frank, himself, survives Typhoid and Conjunctivitis, and as soon as he can leaves school, in spite of his schoolmasters' advice, to earn enough money as a telegram boy and return to America, and maybe have his mother, Angela, and his remaining brothers join him in the future.

And that's about it basically. Some readers will find the book to be a source of reminders of what life was like for them or their forebears in the Ireland of that time. Some will take it as a simple 'against all odds story'. For me though, there were elements, which were part of my own upbringing: the rebel songs like Roddy McCorly, Kevin Barry, etc., my dad ( who coincidentally comes from Antrim, and is a retired school teacher like Frank ) would play on a, BSR Monarch, record player at home. But unlike Frank, I haven't been asked to die for Ireland. But Frank has another message, which is - I think: Ireland, I owe you nothing. And in spirit, a contradiction to the romantic stereotype of book and screen, you can be as cold as Angela's ashes.

Rating:
Summary: TRIUMPHANT!
Review: This was a real page turner, and once you have started, count on not putting it down again until you have finished laughing, crying, reading your way to the end! I was personally thanking my lucky stars above that my own miserable childhood (I thought) "could have been much worse!" A guarantee...you can't read ANGELA'S ASHES and not want to read 'TIS soon after!