Not new to Ciao at all now. Still enjoy reading and writing ops.
Not new to Ciao at all now. Still enjoy reading and writing ops.
Member since:05.12.2000
Reviews:107
Members who trust:94
I must be perverse....I really must be. Whenever something is recommended or awarded a special prize my reactions never seem to echo those of others. Take Educating Rita for example. "It's hilarious" I was told "You'll laugh your socks off" (I don't wear socks, but if I did they would have stayed firmly in place). Off I went to see the production in a local theatre and what happens.....nothing. I was bored...it wasn't funny and why, I kept asking myself , was everyone falling about in heaps?
I digress, but Angela's Ashes produced yet again negative reactions. Oh it started off well, a poor Irish immigrant family living in Brooklyn during the depression, moving to even more poverty in Limerick, Ireland with intolerant and uncharitable relations who do not take kindly to the alcoholic husband from the North of the Country who has moved there with his wife and children in the hope of a better future.
Written in the present tense, I grieved with Frank McCourt over the deaths of his sibling sister and was moved to tears when one twin dies, leaving the other so griefstricken that he too
eventually succumbs to a fatal disease. I felt angry at his father's alcoholism which leaves the family without food or methods to heat their squalid accommodation and I felt frustration at the mother's meek acceptance of their conditions.
McCourt's descriptions of the hardships endured by the family in various rat infested and flea bitten homes makes the reader itch and shudder and even yearn, like him, for a thick crust and a nice boiled egg when there is no food in the house. He manages to convey the bleakness of the area and the dampness of Italy (the family's upstairs room during wet winter weather) is almost palpable. The whole tone of the book is dark,wet and depressing, albeit interspersed with some slightly humourous accounts of the writer's school days, his lifethreatening illness in a strict an uncaring hospital ward when he first becomes aware of his love of poetry and his first fumbling sexual encounters all mixed in with a child's resourcefulness during even the most horrendous conditions.
Why then am I criticising the book I hear you ask. Quite simply it lacked pace. We meet Frank aged about 4 and half way through the book he has only aged a year or possibly 2. The starvation and poverty become repetitive and although the book was written without self pity and the narrative admittedly was quite poetic and rather lyrical, I began to find the tale rather tedious. In fact by this time I was not finding the book hard to put down, which I had been told would be the case, but rather was not particularly looking forward to picking it up -indeed I'm ashamed to admit it took me 3/4 weeks to actually get around to finishing Frank's harrowing account of his childhood.
As a factual account of a childhood in poverty stricken Limerick with the author's descriptions of the places, politics and religious bigotry of the time, the book has its merits, but unfortunately for me personally in terms of entertainment it had little to offer. There were some humerous moments, but none that left me doubled up with laughter and whereas initially I was moved by the writer's accounts of the hardships he endures,, subsequently I began to view them with some scepticism, particularly as at one point he once again describes his hunger, but seems to have forgotten that in a previous paragraph he had described having a huge feast on leftover fish and chips, so much so that his belly stuck out. I also found it difficult to believe that a child would be invited to a hospital for a Christmas lunch and then left for hours on his own to eat it, but perhaps...just perhaps those things did actually happen back in 1930s Ireland.
The book is autobiographical, so naturally Frank is the main character, but for me personally the other characters did not spring to life. Angela, his mother, for example is a rather blurred image who seems to spend her time either begging at the local charity institution, gossiping with neighbours, or languishing in bed with deep depression while her remaining children starve around her. I really did find it very difficult to feel any empathy with her at all or bring an image to mind of how she looked . Similarly, the other siblings were all rather shadowy characters, perhaps with the exception of Malachy, the next eldest son in the family to whom it seems Frank was the closest. The alcoholic father spends his time walking in the countryside, singing Irish songs, or drinking the family's money in the pub, until he disappears over to England never to reappear again.......certainly in this first book anyway. Again I found it hard to visualise this man or feel any degree of emotion ....either anger or pity ..towards him.
In summary, Angela's Ashes is an account of one boy's impoverished childhood which begins in New York, moves to Ireland and ends with him returning to seek his fortune back in America at the age of l6 following his first pint in the local pub. If you like rather depressing tales of hardship and woe then this is the book for you. If however you're like me and enjoy a tale with some pace, meaning, and characters that you can breathe, feel and bring to life then I would suggest you perhaps give this book a miss, but don't forget it's a Pullitzer Prize winner and that means you HAVE to think it's good......don't you .....after all, the experts say it is! !
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Apr 25th, 2001
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