"Angela's Ashes"

Ireland but sepia

It took me about four months to read "Angela's Ashes" – averaging perhaps two chapters a week – not because it was incredibly long or I found it boring, but because parts of the book were so poignant or heart-wrenching I had to put it down for the day. A few details and thoughts below.

"Angela's Ashes" recounts the years Frank McCourt (Frankie) spent growing up in Limerick, Ireland. His own opening words say it best:

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived 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.

People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty, the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years.

Above all—we were wet.

That sets the tone for the entire book. While the subject matter is mostly serious, McCourt's prose is frequently laugh-out-loud funny. The various scenes involving Catholic confession particularly stick out in my mind: most are tragicomic or outright farcical, which makes the poignant ones that much more memorable.

Verdict: alternately hilarious and heartbreaking, "Angela's Ashes" is a moving account of growing up in crushing poverty. Recommended, but know what you're in for.