Och!--What a Read in Angela's Ashes

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Och, what a read! Had heard about this memoir for years (from my wife who'd read & enjoyed it)--finally got around to reading it. What a childhood--what a sad situation McCourt and his brothers (siblings who survived) find themselves in, not to mention his mother, Angela. Drunken father who basically abandons his family and drinks up his wages--leaving them nothing. Oh, he was a character and did have some decent interactions with his wife & kids. But, most of the time, it was after coming home in a drunken stupor, singing old N. Irish battle songs--and waking the kids up to teach them the songs, while marching them around the house in the middle of the night. He surely instilled a hard-nosed, daring-do mentality in the kids, as they had to basically fight for every scrap of food & coal to heat their miserable, flooded, cold tenement in the stinky lane in old Limerick, Ireland--where they'd had to return to after emigrating to the US (and then running out of money/job, when the Depression hit NYC & the US in 1929).

Amazing that McCourt made it as a kid. The stories/insights into the R.C. Church and its practices and folk religious beliefs are quite interesting, and, frankly, comical. Actually, there's a lot of comic relief in McCourt's attitude to all the horrible situations he finds himself in growing up so downtrodden and poor. You have to hand it to the R.C. Church for at least helping the family "on the dole" with food & clothing at various times. Not much, but better 'en nuthin' for sure. Och!--what a shame. What insight too into the not-so-underground hatred of the English--who had oppressed the Irish, as they loved to repeat to each other--"for eight hundred years."

McCourt has an enlivened & engaging writing style that grabs you from the first paragraph & doesn't let go til the last one, as he makes his way, finally at the age of 19, back to NYC. McCourt was obviously a smart kid, who, despite his atrocious--in many ways--upbringing, goes on to use his smarts & persistence & assiduousness to become a successful private school teacher in NYC. And, later, a world famous author--who wins the Pulitzer Prize, no less. Good on ya, lad! Let's lift a pint to toast your success--but, hey!, don't get too familiar with those pints (remember your father's terrible example). Yes, what a great city/country you made it back to in the end--'Tis!

I did something different with this book: I mostly read our old paperback copy of it, but then thought: ah, maybe there's an audiobook available from the library that's read in a real Irish accent? I checked--and, not only was there, but it was read by the author himself!--so I finished the book's last several chapters via the wonderful audiobook on my iPhone, with the lyrical Irish accent of the author himself (who passed away in 2009). Nice way to end the book.


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