Angela's Ashes

In the extraordinary memoir that has won the praise of critics and the hearts of readers, Frank McCourt recounts the heartbreak and humor of his astonishingly poor childhood. Gorgeously written from the innocent perspective of young Frank, this is a memoir more dramatic, suspenseful and meamerizing than most novels."A magical gift for storytelling... a book that stands with The Liars' Club by Mary Karr and Andre Aciman's Out of Egypt as a classic modern memoir...stunning... Angela's Ashes is so good it deserves a sequel." -MICHIKO KAKUTANI, THE NEW YORK TIMES"It is only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he leaves them wanting more when he's done. With Angela's Ashes, McCourt proves himself one of the very best." -MALCOLM JONES, JR., NEWSWEEK"Angela's Ashes contains some of the loveliest language I've ever read. It is both hilarious and utterly heartbreaking....McCourt has an astonishing gift for remembering the details of his childhood. And for writing." -DEIRDRE DONOHUE, USA TODAYFrank McCourt was for many years a writing teacher at Stuyvesant High School and performed with his brother Malachy in A Couple of Blaguards, a musical revue about their Irish youth. He lives in New York City.

\"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 - 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.