Audiobook15 hours
Angela's Ashes
Written by Frank McCourt
Narrated by Frank McCourt
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
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About this audiobook
"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."
So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story.
Perhaps it is a story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing shoes repaired with tires, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner, and searching the pubs for his father, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors -- yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.
Imbued with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion -- and movingly read in his own voice -- Angela's Ashes is a glorious audiobook that bears all the marks of a classic.
So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story.
Perhaps it is a story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing shoes repaired with tires, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner, and searching the pubs for his father, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors -- yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.
Imbued with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion -- and movingly read in his own voice -- Angela's Ashes is a glorious audiobook that bears all the marks of a classic.
Author
Frank McCourt
Frank McCourt (1930–2009) was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, grew up in Limerick, Ireland, and returned to America in 1949. For thirty years he taught in New York City high schools. His first book, Angela’s Ashes, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. In 2006, he won the prestigious Ellis Island Family Heritage Award for Exemplary Service in the Field of the Arts and the United Federation of Teachers John Dewey Award for Excellence in Education.
Reviews for Angela's Ashes
Rating: 3.142645607107601 out of 5 stars
3/5
6,078 ratings212 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Born in Brooklyn in 1930 to recent Irish immigrants Malachy and Angela McCourt, Frank grew up in Limerick after his parents returned to Ireland because of poor prospects in America. It turns out that prospects weren't so great back in the old country either--not with Malachy for a father. A chronically unemployed and nearly unemployable alcoholic, he appears to be the model on which many of our more insulting cliches about drunken Irish manhood are based. Mix in abject poverty and frequent death and illness and you have all the makings of a truly difficult early life. Fortunately, in McCourt's able hands it also has all the makings for a compelling memoir. Won 1997 Pulitzer prize for Biography or Autobiography.Despite the difficult conditions of his childhood, McCourt manages to inject humor into this memoir. Very compelling.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A funny yet tragic memoir of growing up in poverty in Ireland. While the overall world of Frank McCourt's childhood is seriously depressing, he manages to tell stories that have a hopeful tilt. I really liked Angela's Ashes.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My Baby Brothers Must Eat. Imagine years and years of a life in which this is the primary, if not sole, impetus, and you have Frank McCourt's Irish childhood in a nutshell. Angela's Ashes grabs you by the guts and doesn't let go. Right up there with the greatest autobiographies of all time.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What a depressing book and knowing it's autobiographical made it even worse. From the very first chapter on, I thought things can't possibly get worse than they already are. I was wrong.Angela's Ashes is a wonderfully written, yet painful account of Frank McCourt's childhood in Limerick, Ireland. Very powerful!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I 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, he stood by his mother 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.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What an amazing story. I did not actually read this one, I listened to the audio book from my local library app, hoopla. All opinions are my own. I hung on every word. My heart bled for Angela and then later for the kids. This poor family and all the struggles they had. I also felt Angela's family were cold and really should have stepped up more to help out but I guess times were different then. This story will truly tug at your heart. Frank survives so many near death experiences and so much neglect you almost have to hate everyone he comes in contact with. His amazing ability to forgive is what keeps this book moving forward. Review also posted on Instagram @borenbooks, Library Thing, Go Read, Amazon, Goodreads/StacieBoren, Twitter @jason_stacie, and my blog at readsbystacie.com