I've already forgotten where I picked up my used copy of Angela's Ashes, and I didn't mean to start reading it now .. I have so much to read right now. But I did start reading it and almost couldn't stop. Three quarters of the way in, as McCourt chronicled his family history, I thought to myself, do I have to read it to the end? After all, I know what happens, right? But I did have to read it all the way to the end.
After I'd read the last page, I started to read the laudatory blurbs and I had to say that of course, what makes this book is not the content but the style. And, of course, that's not exactly right: McCourt is a great storyteller, who recounts vignettes from his childhood with economy and humor, with elements of the mock heroic style at times. That leavens the grim recounting of grief and disappointment. To be honest, especially after having read Teacher Man, I know that telling a sad story in a funny way is a way of coping, and writing a funny/sad memoir is a way of healing the past, and for McCourt is a special achievement in that setting down this story is the fulfillment of a decades-old goal.
I asked myself at one point, do you see the adult you met in Teacher Man anywhere here? I thought that, after all, I met him when young Francis was asked to write an essay on Jesus and wrote one entitled, "Jesus and the Weather." Limerick's wet climate was a major character in the story.
It's that same abrupt originality that inspired the assignment, in Teacher Man, of excuse notes from famous people in history.
I imagine that many people have heard of this memoir, winner of a Pulitzer and now about 15 years old. Folks exposed to publicity for it probably already know the outlines of the story: Frank's family relocates to Ireland during the height of the Depression. In Limerick they go on the dole. Frank's father is a cliche: an old Republican, whose business in New York was escaping the long arm of the law, he's unable to support his family and can't lay off the booze. His abject enslavement to a pint is so extreme that it's funny at the same time that it makes you want to weep and scream.
It's a perfect storm of poverty: Frank's mom is a good person but she's weak: she can't control her husband and she lets her mother and sister speak to her, her husband, and her children in a way that's probably also pretty scarring to young Frank and his brothers. It's not enough that Frank's dad is a drunk; they complain about the fact that he comes from the North as if it's a communicable disease that Frank had unfortunately caught: the "odd manner". What the heck is an odd manner? Frank's grandmother also accuses her son-in-law of being a Presbyterian, laughable since he was an altar boy.
The memoir is laced with a wonderful series of story pieces that would make any playwright proud. For instance, Frank and his brothers (including their baby brother, in the pram) go out to steal food when their mother is sick. They're all deeply innocent but Michael is perhaps especially so and tells a nice lady the whole sad story of his mother's illness and his brothers' crusade to get food. Of course, the truant officer soon arrives, ending this holiday (of a kind): all the while the truant officer confronts the boys he keeps shaking his head, repeating mournfully, "desperadoes."
That is the charm of this book, the surprise and wonder of finding humor in this portrait of this family and its city.
After I'd read the last page, I started to read the laudatory blurbs and I had to say that of course, what makes this book is not the content but the style. And, of course, that's not exactly right: McCourt is a great storyteller, who recounts vignettes from his childhood with economy and humor, with elements of the mock heroic style at times. That leavens the grim recounting of grief and disappointment. To be honest, especially after having read Teacher Man, I know that telling a sad story in a funny way is a way of coping, and writing a funny/sad memoir is a way of healing the past, and for McCourt is a special achievement in that setting down this story is the fulfillment of a decades-old goal.
I asked myself at one point, do you see the adult you met in Teacher Man anywhere here? I thought that, after all, I met him when young Francis was asked to write an essay on Jesus and wrote one entitled, "Jesus and the Weather." Limerick's wet climate was a major character in the story.
It's that same abrupt originality that inspired the assignment, in Teacher Man, of excuse notes from famous people in history.
I imagine that many people have heard of this memoir, winner of a Pulitzer and now about 15 years old. Folks exposed to publicity for it probably already know the outlines of the story: Frank's family relocates to Ireland during the height of the Depression. In Limerick they go on the dole. Frank's father is a cliche: an old Republican, whose business in New York was escaping the long arm of the law, he's unable to support his family and can't lay off the booze. His abject enslavement to a pint is so extreme that it's funny at the same time that it makes you want to weep and scream.
It's a perfect storm of poverty: Frank's mom is a good person but she's weak: she can't control her husband and she lets her mother and sister speak to her, her husband, and her children in a way that's probably also pretty scarring to young Frank and his brothers. It's not enough that Frank's dad is a drunk; they complain about the fact that he comes from the North as if it's a communicable disease that Frank had unfortunately caught: the "odd manner". What the heck is an odd manner? Frank's grandmother also accuses her son-in-law of being a Presbyterian, laughable since he was an altar boy.
The memoir is laced with a wonderful series of story pieces that would make any playwright proud. For instance, Frank and his brothers (including their baby brother, in the pram) go out to steal food when their mother is sick. They're all deeply innocent but Michael is perhaps especially so and tells a nice lady the whole sad story of his mother's illness and his brothers' crusade to get food. Of course, the truant officer soon arrives, ending this holiday (of a kind): all the while the truant officer confronts the boys he keeps shaking his head, repeating mournfully, "desperadoes."
That is the charm of this book, the surprise and wonder of finding humor in this portrait of this family and its city.
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