Angela's Ashes: A Memoir

3,5*

This was a very sad story about Frank McCourt and his family living in extreme poverty. He tells about his dad and how he would take any money he got and go drink it away while the family starved at home. The family went through many difficult times, including the deaths of several of their children. It was difficult to read about the children starving and living in such filthy conditions. Frank tells about how his father told him stories and songs and I can tell he loved his father despite his failings. Now I want to look up the next book to read more about the life of Frank McCourt after he reaches America.

Read for book club.

“At night I lie in bed thinking about Tom Brown and his adventures at Rugby School and all the characters in P.G. Wodehouse. I can dream about the red-lipped landlord's daughter and the highwayman, and the nurses and nuns can do nothing about it. It's lovely to know the world can't interfere with the inside of your head.”

“When you look at pictures of Jesus He's always wandering around ancient Israel in a sheet. It never rains there and you never hear of anyone coughing or getting consumption or anything like that and no one has a job there because all they do is stand around and eat manna and shake their fists and go to crucifixions.”

This is one of the books that got me back into reading again. I loved the way that as Frank grew, the writing grew as well. When he was 5, it was written as a 5 yr old would write. Very well done.

While I'm really sorry for the horrible things that the author and the people around him had to suffer, and I cannot fathom what it would feel to have such a terrible dad, I cannot get over the fact that the book is overlong. Things are repeated again and again with an extremely descriptive style. The ponderousness of the book, weakens, in the end, its power.