Angela's Ashes
"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. in the 1930s and 40s. 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 -- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling -- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors -- yet lives to tell his tale with eloque
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What you might want to know about Angela's Ashes
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Frank McCourt remembers his Depression-era childhood in the slums of Limerick, Ireland, with a charming drunk of a father, a worn-down mother, and the steady losses that defined every year.
Yes. Angela's Ashes won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was Frank McCourt's debut at age 66 and became one of the most successful memoirs of the 1990s.
Yes. Alan Parker directed a 1999 film adaptation starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle. The film follows the memoir closely and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.
Angela's Ashes was written by Frank McCourt, published in 1996 by Maeva.
Angela's Ashes is 432 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Angela's Ashes takes most readers 6 to 9 hours to finish.
Angela's Ashes is a standalone novel by Frank McCourt, not part of a series.
Angela's Ashes is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
