Review: Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

As I wrote previously, my goal for my "100 Books in 2011" was to reach 25 books by the end of March.  I'm a few days late, but only six!  Technically five, because I finished my 25th book yesterday evening while David was at class.  Twenty-five percent down, seventy-five percent to go!  (When you put it that way, it doesn't seem like I'm too far done!)  And here I'll sum up my 25th book for 2011: Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt.

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

Francis "Frank" McCourt is an odd case.  Born in New York City in 1930 to Irish immigrants (a father from Northern Ireland and a mother from Limerick), he moves with his family back to Ireland following the unfortunate death of his baby sister, Margaret.  The McCourts are a sad, pitiable family, comprised of Frank's alcoholic father, his emotionally-fragile mother (the titular Angela), and his younger brothers, Malachy (named for his father), Oliver, and Eugene.  After being spurned by his paternal grandparents in Northern Ireland and rebuffed by his maternal grandmother's family, the McCourts finally settle in Angela's hometown of Limerick, in the hopes that their new life in Ireland will bring better fortune.

Good fortune is hard to come by, unfortunately.  Malachy McCourt Sr., Frank's father, is in and out of work, and spends what little he makes at the pubs.  Angela McCourt can hardly scrape the family by on her husband's meager earnings "on the dole" (the Irish term for welfare) and is forced to resort to begging at times to keep her children fed.  She is also constantly pregnant -- the family is ever-expanding, which only adds to their financial woes.  Frank finds what little solace he has in his Catholic religion, which runs every aspect of his life, and in school, where he discovers he is incredibly intelligent.  His one, all-encompassing dream is to finish school, get a job that pays a little money, and save enough to move back to America, what he and everyone else considers his homeland.  But over the years, Frank discovers that Ireland is more in his blood and soul than he ever imagined it would be.

Angela's Ashes has a reputation for being depressing, and is it ever.  I gave up on the hope that the McCourts would eventually have some good luck about a third of the way into the book.  But the rawness, the reality, is so complete, I could picture Frank's life in rainy, cold Limerick as easily as if I had been there myself watching it.  Rarely have I ever been so transported by a book.  

Frank's interesting penchant for not using quotation marks took some getting used to, but by the second chapter, I was acclimated and on my way to eating the book up.  My one complaint was that the ending came too soon, and left too many unanswered questions.  Frank McCourt wrote two sequels to his Pulitzer-prizewinning novel, 'Tis and Teacher Man, that apparently continue the story (and maybe answer some of those questions), so I may pick those up in the future.  On a whole, one of my favorite memoirs, and I will definitely be reading this again.

Rating: ****