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bzzlarabzz's review against another edition
3.0
As an English teacher in training and someone who has worked in high schools, the thing I found most striking was that McCourt's descriptions of teenagers in the 1960s were recognizable as students in today's classrooms. Teenagers are teenagers, no matter their time. As always, his anecdotes were engaging, but this book gave me little to point to and say, "Ah, so that's why he was an award-winning teacher." Having read his other memoirs, I felt like this was written as a way to cap his story, not because McCourt felt compelled to tell this particular tale.
lorrainelowereads's review against another edition
3.0
I haven’t read Angela’s Ashes (and never will; why would I do that to myself?) so Teacher Man was my first venture into Frank McCourt’s writing. I really enjoyed this yarn about his 30-odd years teaching English and Creative Writing in New York public high schools and colleges. It’s about how, through teaching, he learnt about himself and eventually had the confidence to write about his childhood (i.e. Angela’s Ashes, which won a Pulitzer Prize). There’s also a nice Prologue about how it felt to suddenly become famous in his sixties (after winning a Pulitzer and all of a sudden becoming a millionaire), and an interview at the back where he mentions the possibility of writing a novel, which was sad because he has passed away now so we’ll never know what that novel might have been like.
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