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readingandranunculus 's review for:
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
by Frank McCourt
I do believe I'm the last person on earth to have ever read this book and everyone but I got the memo that it's brilliant and awe-inspiring and I wish I could write trains of thought without punctuation so majestically as Mr. McCourt.
It's not going to blow anybody's mind to say that I loved this book. It rips your heart out, it really does. When Frank had to lick leftover newspaper from his uncle's fish and chips wrapper, that's how desperately hungry and at the bottom of the barrel he was, my gut wrenched. His poor mother, losing three babies and married to man addicted to the drink and so far gone into the addiction that he can't see (or refuses to see) that his family needs the money for literal survival. Poor Frankie and his brothers, all of them sweet and good and somehow able to be positive in the most desperate of situations, the way only children can. How terrible that his own aunts and uncles and grandmothers treated him with disdain for the sole reason that his mother married a man from the North.
What a tragic childhood.
Yet at the same time, I wonder if Mr. McCourt found his childhood to be tragic. As a child, did he think he had it terribly? He knew his family were dirt poor (literally), he watched as his mother lost three children, stood by her as she weeped over her husband who continued to let his family down, but Frank and his brothers were able to find happiness and light in the darkest of places and times, such is the resilience and power of a child's mind.
If ever there were a book that forced you to be grateful for everything you have, grateful that you have a bed, your own toilet, shoes, food and that you don't have to lick the grease off a newspaper to stave away the hunger, this book is it.
Bring on 'Tis and Teacher Man.
It's not going to blow anybody's mind to say that I loved this book. It rips your heart out, it really does. When Frank had to lick leftover newspaper from his uncle's fish and chips wrapper, that's how desperately hungry and at the bottom of the barrel he was, my gut wrenched. His poor mother, losing three babies and married to man addicted to the drink and so far gone into the addiction that he can't see (or refuses to see) that his family needs the money for literal survival. Poor Frankie and his brothers, all of them sweet and good and somehow able to be positive in the most desperate of situations, the way only children can. How terrible that his own aunts and uncles and grandmothers treated him with disdain for the sole reason that his mother married a man from the North.
What a tragic childhood.
Yet at the same time, I wonder if Mr. McCourt found his childhood to be tragic. As a child, did he think he had it terribly? He knew his family were dirt poor (literally), he watched as his mother lost three children, stood by her as she weeped over her husband who continued to let his family down, but Frank and his brothers were able to find happiness and light in the darkest of places and times, such is the resilience and power of a child's mind.
If ever there were a book that forced you to be grateful for everything you have, grateful that you have a bed, your own toilet, shoes, food and that you don't have to lick the grease off a newspaper to stave away the hunger, this book is it.
Bring on 'Tis and Teacher Man.