Angela's Ashes - Softcover

McCourt, Frank

4.14

628,828 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006510345 ISBN 13: 9780006510345

Publisher: Flamingo, 1999

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Special edition of the bestselling classic, to tie-in with the release of Alan Parker’s major new film of Angela’s Ashes

Angela’s Ashes is Frank McCourt’s sad, funny, bittersweet memoir of growing up in New York in the 30s and in Ireland in the 40s. It is a story of extreme hardship and suffering, in Brooklyn tenements and Limerick slums – too many children, too little money, his mother Angela barely coping as his father Malachy’s drinking bouts constantly brought the family to the brink of disaster. It is a story of courage and survival against apparently overwhelming odds.

Written with the vitality and resonance of a work of fiction, and a remarkable absence of sentimentality, Angela’s Ashes is imbued on every page with Frank McCourt’s distinctive humour and compassion. Out of terrible circumstances, he has created a glorious book in the tradition of Ireland’s literary masters, which bears all the marks of a great classic.

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Product Description:

Angela's Ashes

Review:

"Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood," writes Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes. "Worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." Welcome, then, to the pinnacle of the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. Born in Brooklyn in 1930 to recent Irish immigrants Malachy and Angela McCourt, Frank grew up in Limerick after his parents returned to Ireland because of poor prospects in America. It turns out that prospects weren't so great back in the old country either--not with Malachy for a father. A chronically unemployed and nearly unemployable alcoholic, he appears to be the model on which many of our more insulting clich�s about drunken Irish manhood are based. Mix in abject poverty, and frequent death and illness, and you have all the makings of a truly difficult early life. Fortunately, in McCourt's able hands it also has all the makings of a compelling memoir.

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