skip to content
Close Window

Please sign in to WorldCat 

Don't have an account? You can easily create a free account.

Angela's ashes : a memoir Preview this item
Preview this item

Angela's ashes : a memoir

Author: Frank McCourt
Publisher: New York : Simon & Schuster, 1999.
Edition/Format: Book : English : 2nd Touchstone edView all editions and formats
Summary:

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised  Read more...

Rating:

Retrieving ratings and reviews data...  

Get this item

Borrow or obtain a copy

Finding libraries that hold this item...

Details

Named Person: McCourt family.; Frank McCourt
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Frank McCourt
ISBN: 068487217X : 9780684872179
OCLC Number: 42890543
Notes: "A Touchstone book." Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Description: 363 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
Responsibility: Frank McCourt.

Abstract:

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy -- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling -- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors -- yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness. Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

Reviews

Retrieving WorldCat reviews...
Retrieving EMRO reviews...
Retrieving weRead reviews...
Retrieving Amazon reviews...

Tags

Be the first.