'Tis: A Memoir (Frank McCourt Memoirs) - Softcover

McCourt, Frank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684865742 ISBN 13: 9780684865744

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2000

Synopsis

A #1 New York Times bestseller and the eagerly anticipated sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Angela's Ashes, this masterpiece from Frank McCourt tells of his American journey from impoverished immigrant to brilliant teacher and raconteur. Frank McCourt's glorious childhood memoir, Angela's Ashes, has been loved and celebrated by readers everywhere for its spirit, its wit and its profound humanity. A tale of redemption, in which storytelling itself is the source of salvation, it won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Rarely has a book so swiftly found its place on the literary landscape. And now we have 'Tis, the story of Frank's American journey from impoverished immigrant to brilliant teacher and raconteur. Frank lands in New York at age nineteen, in the company of a priest he meets on the boat. He gets a job at the Biltmore Hotel, where he immediately encounters the vivid hierarchies of this "classless country," and then is drafted into the army and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type reports. It is Frank's incomparable voice--his uncanny humor and his astonishing ear for dialogue--that renders these experiences spellbinding. When Frank returns to America in 1953, he works on the docks, always resisting what everyone tells him, that men and women who have dreamed and toiled for years to get to America should "stick to their own kind" once they arrive. Somehow, Frank knows that he should be getting an education, and though he left school at fourteen, he talks his way into New York University. There, he falls in love with the quintessential Yankee, long-legged and blonde, and tries to live his dream. But it is not until he starts to teach--and to write--that Frank finds his place in the world. The same vulnerable but invincible spirit that captured the hearts of readers in Angela's Ashes comes of age. As Malcolm Jones said in his Newsweek review of Angela's Ashes, "It is only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he leaves them wanting more when he is done...and McCourt proves himself one of the very best." Frank McCourt's 'Tis is one of the most eagerly awaited books of our time, and it is a masterpiece.

About this title

Review:

The sequel to Frank McCourt's memoir of his Irish Catholic boyhood, Angela's Ashes, picks up the story in October 1949 upon his arrival in America. Though he was born in New York, the family had returned to Ireland due to poor prospects in the United States. Now back on American soil, this awkward 19-year-old, with his "pimply face, sore eyes, and bad teeth," has little in common with the healthy, self-assured college students he sees on the subway and dreams of joining in the classroom. Initially, his American experience is as harrowing as his impoverished youth in Ireland, including two of the grimmest Christmases ever described in literature. McCourt views the U.S. through the same sharp eye and dark humour that distinguished his first memoir; race prejudice, casual cruelty and dead-end jobs weigh on his spirits as he searches for a way out. A glimpse of hope comes from the army, where he acquires some white-collar skills, and from New York University, which admits him without a high school diploma. But the journey toward his position teaching creative writing at Stuyvesant High School is neither quick nor easy. Fortunately, McCourt's openness to every variety of human emotion and longing remains exceptional; even the most damaged, difficult people he encounters are richly rendered individuals with whom the reader can't help but feel uncomfortable kinship. The magical prose, with its singing Irish cadences, brings grandeur and beauty to the most sorrowful events, including the final scene, in which Angela's ashes are scattered over a Limerick graveyard. --Wendy Smith

Review:

Maureen Howard The New York Times Book Review 'Tis a success story, after all.

Henry Kisor Chicago Sun-Times 'Tis a grand book. 'Tis indeed!

Jackie Jones Bleecker The San Diego Union-Tribune 'Tis is, finally, a triumphant American story -- the triumph of a teacher...of a writer whose words we can't wait to read.

Gail Caldwell Boston Sunday Globe That magnificent voice is back in full, as captivating and soothing as an on-stage hypnotist. Regaling you from a bar stool or teacher's lectern, McCourt is utterly and always in charge of this tale....A sweet, sweet ode to memory: to the moment-to-moment experience of a real, then reimagined, life.

Mary Ann Gwinn The Seattle Times McCourt establishes himself as a Dickens for our time, a writer who can peel the many layers of society like an onion and reveal the core.

Peter Collier Los Angeles Times Book Review 'Tis has those elements that made Angela's Ashes such a success -- the narrative brio, the fierce sympathy for human tic and torment, the intuitive feel for character and, above all, the love of language and that very Irish understanding that words are our only weapon in our long quarrel with God.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0684865742
• ISBN 13: 9780684865744
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 367