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In this Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Frank McCourt tells the story of a deprived, difficulty-ridden childhood in Limerick, Ireland in the 1930s and ‘40s. You would be hard-pressed to find more sorry circumstances in which to grow up, and with horror, readers learn of the struggles of the impoverished working class in rural Ireland during the Depression Era.

Angela's Ashes

Originally Published: 1996

Pages: 364

Available on: Kindle, Paperback, Hardcover, Audiobook

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The eldest of seven children, Frank McCourt was born in New York City to two young immigrants, Angela and Malachy. He was conceived out of wedlock, and under the indignant pressure of two horrified and stern Catholic aunts, Angela and Malachy marry and begin a life together that is marked by more unhappy milestones than happy ones. Love, familial happiness, and marital support are not common denominators. 

Unfortunately, Malachy, despite a gentle sort of love for his family, provides no support for his constantly growing family due to his alcoholism. His inclination to drink reduces his family’s circumstances to worse than nothing, year after year. Frequently, after everyone has gone to bed without supper, trying to forget their empty stomachs for a few hours, Malachy will come in stone-drunk roaring a song, wake up his little sons, and make them march around the cold kitchen and swear their loyalty to Ireland.

After the death of Frank’s little sister, the loss of which breaks both Angela’s and Malachy’s hearts, the family relocates to Limerick, where Angela had grown up. With hardly a penny in their pockets, their change in environment brings no chance of luck, for rural Ireland was hit hard in the 1930s. 

McCourt paints a grim scene in Limerick. The family lives on an impoverished lane inhabited by other destitute families: children running around in their one, dirty, hole-ridden pair of clothes; fathers staying out late at the pub dreading coming back home with nothing to show for themselves; mothers worrying by the fireside, trying to pacify their screaming, hungry babies, hooked on cigarettes. No matter how often the family went without a decent meal, there was always enough change to get a drink at a pub or puff on a packet of cigarettes. 

Angela’s mother and sister begrudgingly provide little support to her, as she suffers a miscarriage, loses her two little twin boys to illness, begs every Saturday for financial help from the county, and does her best to scrounge up meals for her surviving children. Every time Frank’s father secures a job, the family rejoices and has hot meals for a week, but inevitably, he goes out to the pub, comes home reeling drunk singing Irish songs, and consequently, sleeps in, misses work the next day, and is out of a job. The family is back to poverty level again. 

Eventually, his father gets a job in England, where he is supposed to send his wages back to his family every other week. However, they hear from him few and far between, but for tales of his generosity to fellow drinkers at his favorite local pub.

Frank observationally relays his childhood from a perspective that is mostly free from anger, disgust, or censure and remains a somewhat emotionally-removed narrator. Although he describes his family’s lowest moments and his own painful memories of hunger, homelessness, and neglect, his words are not tainted by negative emotion. Instead, he writes from the curious and naive viewpoint of his younger self, where adults dictate strict Catholic principles that offer no relief to a hungry 7-year-old and swat at him when he speaks a bit too candidly.

Despite the overwhelming precedence of hardship, there is a continual Irish wit and humor, offering charming moments of comedic relief throughout Angela’s Ashes. McCourt describes the memorable instances where his family did share a happy memory together, or  a time where his little brother Malachy’s sunshine disposition and eye-catching head of curls charmed strangers’ hearts, or a time when the state of he and his siblings’ rags evoked a stranger’s act of kindness and sympathy.

As Frank begins to attend school, he finds his knack for storytelling. While recovering from typhoid in the hospital, where he has a warm bed and better meals than ever before in his life, he discovers a new love for reading; books are a sort of safe haven in such dire circumstances. One of his teachers tells him:

“You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”

As he grows, Frank takes on jobs, gets into scrapes around town, and eventually extends his foresight back to the shores of America, where he had been born. He wants more than the life he had known in Limerick and begins to put aside meager wages towards that venture.

Angela’s Ashes is the kind of book that redefines a reader’s definition of bleak.  It is not written as an inspiring tale of an individual that rises from the ashes; it more grimly dictates a society where everyone and everything seems stuck forever in a revolving mess of failure, disappointment, and discomfort. Bad luck seems to inevitably counteract every hope or stroke of good fortune that happens along the family’s path. It makes readers wonder at sheer human fortitude and hope, when faced with overwhelming grief, poverty, and hunger.

“The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.”

Angela’s Ashes won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 and made several banned lists for “obscene content.” Frank McCourt wrote a sequel about his better years in America, called Tis, and recently passed away in 2009. His younger brother Malachy lives on and also became a writer upon moving to America.