Angela's Ashes: A Memoir

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Summary: Superb and memorable in every way!
Review: Though purchased for someone else, as soon as I got it I knew I'd have to borrow it back. It was a one day read, bringing me to the times and lives of past and present family members. Evoking a certain mystical awareness that has stayed with me since, enabling me to better sort and see the world I have been born it.

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Summary: The best biography I have ever read
Review: This book keeps you turning pages from page one. I thought I had it rough during the depression in the U.S. from 1925 to 1948. Makes me think I was living in the lap of luxury.

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Summary: Buy this book!
Review: I loved this book--the only thing I recommend besides buying and reading it is picking up an Irish folk songs CD too; hearing the proud strains of "Roddy McCorley" as Malachy Sr. stumbles home after drinking the dole money completes the scene

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Summary: Wrenching...
Review: What an unbelievably wrenching story! The best I have ever read. 'Tis

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Summary: A mix of humor and heartbreak
Review: Angela's Ashes is one of the best books I've read in a long time. When I read this book, I felt like I was reading a book about some of my relatives. McCourt's mix of humor and complete despair really exemplifies not only the Irish spirit, but human spirit as well. To tell the story from a child's point of view creates a pathos which at time had me laughing and at times had me in tears. This is a must read for anyone who grew up with an Irish or Irish Catholic background

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Summary: A voice for an impoverished country
Review: I saw so much of my own family in this book. The attitudes of the older generations are still the same. This book brought back wonderful memories for me and at the same time it was very disturbing. Unfortunately much of the discrimination still takes place in Ireland, especially in the North. It's about time Ireland had a voice, and who better to speak for an impoverished country than Frankie McCourt

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Summary: A memorable book
Review: One of my favorite books is "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." One of my favorite authors is Mark Twain. To my mind, "Angela's Ashes" had some of the best elements of both. Like "Tree," it tells the story of a family struggling with poverty brought about by the father's problems with alcohol. Like Twain, McCourt tells his story through the eyes of an adolescent. And he captures a youngster's point of view in an extremely credible way. In spite of the harrowing story he has to tell, this device allows real and moving humor to brighten the story

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Summary: Angela's Ashes is a Memoir I shall always cherish.
Review: Frank McCort has given us an amazing account of his less than idyllic childhood as a member of the poorest of the poor growing up in Limerick Ireland. The affects of an alcoholic father, unable to provide anything outside a drunken song and the appetite for a good story, as well as the Catholic Church with its shortcomings and failure to recognize the good in its poorest faithful members will bring you to tears. Frank's was a childhood filled with loss, disappointment and feelings of shame. Its a wonder such a beginning could be penned into this touching memoir. I shall always cherish this book

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Summary: Simply and poignantly, moving
Review: Strangely, I must admit that this is not my usual read. I am almost embarrassed to say that what attracted me to Angela's Ashes in the first place, was the cover art. "God bless the jacket designers". What Frank McCourt accomplishes in this memoir is astounding. The style is engaging and originally written for its genre. But the true measure of this book is in the genuine pathos it exacts from the reader. It is almost draining. What suprises me most is that after an upbringing like that, McCourt has the depth of heart to write such a poignant memoir. I would gladly shake his hand

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Summary: Why even rich kids can identify with Frank McCourt
Review: I'd give the book a 10 but those poems and songs of which we had to read all the choruses repeatedly weren't THAT great. Lacing the unimaginable and sickening poverty and disease anecdotes were memorable renditions of speeches and offhand comments made by adults to the McCourt children the like of which one rarely hears today from educated, sensitivity-trained and psychologically- oriented people, but which were all too common in ALL social strata until the recent past. These comments, directly and obliquely derogatory of the McCourt children and parents alike, must have scarred those children like the cold and malnutrition, and these are wounds any middle-aged person with a clear memory of his or her own chidhood can surely feel