"Angela´s Ashes" by Frank McCourt - review

"Angela´s Ashes" is a memoir written by the Irish author Frank McCourt. The book was published in 1996 and won the Pulitzer Prize for the Autobiography.

Frank McCourt is born during the "Depression" period (the 1930´s) in Brooklyn to the Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick in Ireland during the difficult times of the World War II. Frank´s mother, Angela, with no money to feed her children, tries to hold the family together. Frank´s father, Malachy, rarely works and when he does he drinks his wages.

McCourt writes: "I wonder how I survived at all... Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." Wearing rags for diapers, begging pig´s head for the Christmas dinner, gathering coal from the roadside to light the fire, young Frank has to struggle with the extreme poverty, near-starvation and alcoholism of his father. Forced to grow far too early, McCourt dreams only of returning to America, where "everyone is a movie star".

Angela´s Ashes is one of the most humorously told sad stories I have ever read.

The book is really depressing, absolutely miserable and heartbreaking (I had really my eyes wet when the priest says about poor people "I should be on my knees washing their feet."). I feel dearly for Frank and his family, but the book makes you think about millions suffered at that difficult time and ... about our modern world where still children have even worse childhood than Frank experienced.

But despite the hardship, the novel (in fact it is a loose collection of the anecdotes) is told with wry humour and charm (you can´t help but laugh when young Frank is worried about his first confession because of the dirty story he heard from his friend or when brothers tries the artificial teeth of their parents and looked like "the movie monsters":).

How one book can be so warm and horrible, how the author can make you laugh and cry at the same time? I have no idea. But it makes the novel glorious.

And small remark about the writing style of book. For me it was quite difficult to get used to the way McCourt writes because it is like reading his thoughts. But what I really liked is the narration through the eyes of an innocent child: full of tolerance, forgiveness and understanding. It is so touching seeing how a child can still love his alcoholic father despite all the pain he makes him suffer.

I do really enjoy the book. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for the good novel, full of humour, but also very meaningful. Great story. Read "tis".