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ricksilva 's review for:
Angela's Ashes
by Frank McCourt
Frank McCourt's memoir of growing up impoverished in Limerick, Ireland, in the 1940s is alternating heartbreaking and brilliantly hilarious, and occasionally both at the same time.
Born in America, his mother struggled to hold the family together through an endless pattern of neglect and alcoholism by his father. After Frank's younger sister died, the family moved to Ireland to his mother Angela's home town of Limerick, where Frank grew up in the Lanes, where his father would drink the dole and his mother was left to beg for the bare necessities of life.
While the book is thick with the stark realities of the brutal cycle of poverty, it is also full of powerful moments of compassion, and some absolutely biting humor on everything from the culture of Limerick's street kids to the Catholic Church's endless cycle of sin, guilt, and absolution.
Frank's conflicting emotions toward his parents, and his struggle to forge his own path, are punctuated with moments of complete absurdity, both comic and tragic.
Born in America, his mother struggled to hold the family together through an endless pattern of neglect and alcoholism by his father. After Frank's younger sister died, the family moved to Ireland to his mother Angela's home town of Limerick, where Frank grew up in the Lanes, where his father would drink the dole and his mother was left to beg for the bare necessities of life.
While the book is thick with the stark realities of the brutal cycle of poverty, it is also full of powerful moments of compassion, and some absolutely biting humor on everything from the culture of Limerick's street kids to the Catholic Church's endless cycle of sin, guilt, and absolution.
Frank's conflicting emotions toward his parents, and his struggle to forge his own path, are punctuated with moments of complete absurdity, both comic and tragic.