Frank McCourt
Angela's Ashes is a book, and now film, of the childhood memoirs of Frank McCourt. The book won the Pulitzer Prize and has been given praise by critics all over the world.
It is the first of two books by Frank McCourt, both are memoirs. This book covers his life from 3 to 19 years old. The sequel, 'Tis continues the story onwards.
Characters
Frank McCourt (author) Frank is (obviously) the main character. When the story begins, he is four years old and living with his mum, dad and three brothers. Being memoirs, we see the whole story from Frank's point of view. It is very interesting seeing how it was for a young child to grow up in such poor conditions.
Malachy McCourt Snr There are two Malachy's in the book, Frank's dad and brother. Frank's dad is an alcoholic and this causes a lot of trouble for the whole family. He is an ex-IRA man who is from Toome (Northern Ireland) and so has great trouble getting any employment in the Republic of Ireland (especially Limerick.)
Malachy McCourt Jr Malachy is the second oldest child in the family after Frank. He is one year younger than Frank at the beginning (and all the way through his life) and is supposedly the cute one. This is particularly helpful in getting the family free food from shopkeepers who think he is cute. He is a likeable character although does not feature much as he largely lives in Frank's shadow.
Angela McCourt (formerly Sheenan) Angela is the long suffering mum of the family. She tries her best to keep the family together and give all of her children
the best education and quality of life possible. She is constantly fighting against the odds to do this. She is a key figure in the children's lives with Malachy being drunk a lot. She in total has seven children but not all of them survive.
Michael McCourt Michael is a young child who isn't actually born until the McCourts reach Ireland. He does not figure much in the story because of the age difference. Think about it; when you were young, how much time did you spend with your little brother - probably very little. However, Frank cannot leave out his brother because he doesn’t have much use; that would cause a family dispute.
Eugene and Oliver McCourt Genie and Ollie are twins and were born in New York. They did everything together but did not last long enough to develop into mature characters.
Alphie McCourt Alphie is the youngest McCourt and again, his character does not get long to develop as the book ends when he is barely nine years old. Frank spends a lot of his teenage life away from the family (more later) so you do not get to know much about Alphie.
Margaret McCourt This was the child that almost saved the McCourts. Malachy (senior) loved Margaret and gave up drinking for her until she died very prematurely. This means she takes up only a few chapters and in life, she has little or no point (storywise.) When she dies, she causes trouble and forces the family to emigrate to Ireland and causes massive distress to Angela.
There are many other characters in the book - think of how many people you know between 4 and 19 - but the family is, obviously, the centre of attention for the majority of the book.
Plot
The book starts in Brooklyn, New York. The McCourt family is living in slum conditions, Angela and Malachy have a child called Margaret but she soon dies and Angela goes into deep despair and cannot live any longer in their house. The whole family then moves back to Ireland using Frank's grandma's money. They go to Toome but there is no room for the family so they move on to Dublin for a short time before settling in Limerick where many of Angela's relations live.
Within a few years, the two twins die; firstly Oliver. Eugene then becomes depressed and dies soon after.
Frank goes to school and at the tender age of 14 leaves to get a job, why, because his alcoholic father can't get a job because of his northern accent and when he does, he drinks it all.
The next 5 years see Frank trying to raise money to go to America where the streets are paved with gold and everyone has a white smile, or so he believes from the occasional film he sees at the Lyric theatre.
Throughout the book, there are many incidents including dancing classes, First Confession, several house moves and plenty of disease. I won't ruin the book for anyone who is going on to read it but can say you are being constantly surprised.
---Money--- The whole population of Ireland were poor, Limerick was poor compared to Dublin, the McCourts were poor compared to many people (but not all) who lived in Limerick. They had several sources of income: From Malachy, the father who gets money from the dole and sporadic jobs. He spends most of it, though, on drink and what he does bring back is not enough. When the war starts (WWII) he moves to Coventry and works in a munitions factory but the family see none of the money. The other source of income is from the children getting jobs; this means all of the kids leave school at 14 to get mediocre jobs. The pay is low but it is better than nothing (from school.) They also get food (and a bed) from different charities and general begging although it is very degrading. One chapter tells of how Christmas is good because there is nobody else around the docks taking bits of scrap coal and wood for a fire.
---Religion--- Religion plays a large part in Frank's life, he is continually scared of dying and not being in a state of grace and being doomed to hell. His family is a devout Roman Catholic one like most people in Southern Ireland at that time. Mass is an important time of the week and everyone is named after a saint. (Frank is named as St. Francis of Assisi.) This leads to among other things, a biased education and going to church to hear rich, upper-class priests preaching that the people should not complain about being poor.
---General Thoughts--- • I found this book to be an interesting account of Frank's childhood. I read the book fully expecting it to be full of the gory details of death and disease in the Limerick slums. Instead, it had satire. It was not humour in the form of all-out jokes but more like observations that probably were not funny when Frank thought them at the time.
• This leads nicely to my next point, the way Frank has written in an intelligent manner (not patronising) but still made it sound like a child's commentary on his daily-life. It could have easily turned into a novel that sounded like it was being read with a narrator; this book has no narrator. The book is in the first person and I like this.
• The chapter length is perfect (unlike 'Tis review coming soon), not too long so that you need a flight to Australia to read it but not too short so that it is very stop-start.
• Being memoirs of a childhood, particularly when he was young, means there are no long running sagas so each chapter will cover one or two events then the next chapter will start again fresh a month or so later. This becomes less evident as his life goes on and you can spend several chapters about one event. However, saying this, it is still a page-turner and I can say this confidently after spending several nights up at 1am (oops… didn't realise.)
• I loved this book and am currently in the middle of 'Tis - the sequel - I found it interesting and although not everyone will like it, I can give it a very big recommendation.
• I shall end with a quote from near the beginning of the book. It is about Frank and his brother Malachy on a seesaw in a Brooklyn playground. They are three and two respectively.
"Up, down, up, down. Malachy goes up. I get off. Malachy goes down. Seesaw hits ground. He screams."
NOTE - I never read books more than once so ignore that rating below/above.
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I am also half way through 'Tis the sequel and found Angelas Ashes compelling and thought provoking.It made me humble in that we do not have to live in such squalor and poverty,and indeed ignorance.
biddie2 25.03.2003 03:22
Thanks for the really good opinion on this book. It helped me decide whether the book was for me or whether to give it a miss. The foreword in the book looked too much like gloom and doom, but having read this op I`ll now actually get round to reading the book - ta! Biddie2
Apr 3rd, 2002
very helpful by (100%):
