Angela's Ashes

By: Frank McCourt

Narrated by: Frank McCourt

McCourt’s Pulitzer Prize winning look back at his childhood. “It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while…”

“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 or whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying shcoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years. Above all we were wet…”

So begins Frank McCourt’s stunning memoir of his childhood in Ireland and America, a recollection of unvarnished truth and no self pity, of grinding poverty and indomitable spirit that will live in the memory long after the tape has ended.

Now a major film directed by Alan Parker and starring Robert Carlyle and Emily Watson.

©1996 Frank McCourt; (P)1999 Harper Collins UK

I laughed with moistened eyes …

I was reminded of how blessed I have been these 62 years I’ve lived. I’ve never known anything like the desperation Frank and his family faced from abject poverty all those years ago.

The engrossing story is well told and I was flip flopped between balancing tears and laughing out loud.

Five stars all round *****.

A heart wrenching tale of poverty

McCourt’s memoir is touching, somehow skipping between being both light and tragic, following the life of the eldest son living in abject poverty in New York and Ireland. Brilliantly narrated, I was sorry to have finished it.

Captivating

A brilliantly narrated story that always had me rooting for Frank. Rising from the ashes indeed

I get the feeling this is a true story

What did you love best about Angela's Ashes?

The indepth understanding of the Irish

What did you like best about this story?

A little raunch and roughness on the appropriate occasion

Which scene was your favorite?

The various ones when the drunken father showed he loved his children no matter what

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No

Any additional comments?

Pity it is only available in the abridged version. It is a book that lends itself to both listening to and reading

Fantastic. I suppose writing this autobiography must have been therapeutic for Mr. Frank McCourt. What a gentleman!

A wonderful book. Makes one grateful of the abundance of today. To recount such misery with humor, you must be an extremely intelligent human being.