Stunning....Mr. McCourt does for the town of Limerick what the young Joyce did for Dublin.
—The New York Times

Why is this dark memoir, from a previously unpublished 66-year-old retired high-school teacher, generating so much buzz in publishing circles? It probably helps that Frank McCourt, a committed New York pub-crawler, has made a lot of influential lit-world friends while nursing pints of beer over the decades. But here's a less cynical answer: It's largely because Angela's Ashes relates McCourt's miserable, bruising Irish Catholic childhood in language that is as flinty and compelling as the story itself. He's soaked up some real literary ability along with the suds.

Born in the U.S. at the start of the Depression to Irish immigrant parents, McCourt suffered early and often at the hands of his father—a man who rarely got work and when he did, drank his meager wages away. When the family decided to move back to Ireland, things went from very bad to much worse. They settled in a Limerick slum and went on the dole, which was "just enough for all of us to starve on." (Indeed, neither of McCourt's two young twin brothers lived much beyond their second birthdays.) Barely old enough himself to go to school, McCourt helped his mother Angela scrounge for "bits of coal that drop from lorries" so they could at least have a fire for tea. He gathered "everything that burns, coal, wood, cardboard, paper."

It was a life so brimming with hardship and grinding poverty that when McCourt returned home from months in the typhoid ward, he longed for "the hospital where the white sheets were changed everyday and where there wasn't a sign of a flea." Hope kindled when World War II created jobs in England and McCourt's father went off with the promise of sending money back to his family. They rarely heard from him again.

Throughout this tale, McCourt displays a wry sense of humor. "When you look at pictures of Jesus," he notes at one point, "He's always wandering around ancient Israel in a sheet. It never rains there and you never hear of anyone coughing or getting consumption or anything like that and no one has a job there because all they do is stand around and eat manna and shake their fists and go to crucifixions."

It's no surprise when, with his first real job as a telegram delivery boy, McCourt begins to plan his escape from this hell. The book's most triumphant moment occurs when he manages to make the return passage to America at age 19. With Angela's Ashes, McCourt has succeeded in turning bleak reality into literature that sings.
—Salon

A classic modern memoir...stunning.
—Michiko Kakutani

A monument to the self-perpetuating power of the human spirit...an accomplished, authoritative, and shimmering example of the memoirist's art.
—Margaria Fichtner

A spellbinding memoir of childhood that swerves flawlessly between aching sadness and desperate humor...a work of lasting beauty.
—Peter Finn

A splendid memoir, both funny and forgiving.

Every once in a while, a lucky reader comes across a book that makes an indelible impression, a book you immediately want to share with everyone around you....Frank McCourt's life, and his searing telling of it, reveal all we need to know about being human.
—Linnea Lannon

McCourt is the eldest of eight children born to Angela Sheehan and Malachy McCourt in the 1930s. The McCourts began their family in poverty in Brooklyn, yet when Angela slipped into depression after the death of her only daughter (four of eight children survived), the family reversed the tide of emigration and returned to Ireland, living on public assistance in Limerick. McCourt's story is laced with the pain of extreme poverty, aggravated by an alcoholic father who abandoned the family during World War II. Given the burdens of grief and starvation, it's a tribute to his skill that he can serve the reader a tale of love, some sadness, but at least as much laughter as the McCourts' "Yankee" children knew growing up in the streets of Limerick. His story, almost impossible to put down, may well become a classic.
—Robert Moore, DuPont Merck Pharmaceuticals, Framingham, Massachusetts

It is a wonder that McCourt survived his childhood in the slums of Depression-era Limerick, Ireland: three of his siblings did not, dying of minor illnesses complicated by near starvation. Even more astonishing is how generous of spirit he became and remains. His family lived—barely—in a flat so miserable that every year they had to cram themselves into an upstairs room when winter floods made the place only half-habitable. That upstairs room was "Italy"—warm and dry. Downstairs was Ireland—wet and cold. Father sat up there drinking tea, while mother Angela often could not rise from bed, so depressed was she. Or mother sat by the fire, waiting for father to return; when he did, frequently drunk on their little money, he would line up the boys and extract promises that they would die for Ireland.

Dying was what everyone seemed to do best: the little sister, the twins, the girl with whom Frank first had sex, the old man Frank read to, too many boys from school, too many neighbors, too many relatives. McCourt spares us no details: the stench of the one toilet shared by an entire street, the insults of the charity officers, the maurauding rats, the street fights, the infected eyes, the fleas in the mattress...Yet he found a way to love in that miserable Limerick, and it is love one remembers as the dominant flavor in this Irish stew.

A beautifully written memoir full of Irish wit and pathos, making it stand out among the garden variety of youthful reminisces. Let's face it, a bad childhood is more interesting and McCourt had it in spades. He was born in Brooklyn, but his family went back to Ireland where he grew up on the dole exacerbated by alcoholism (his father's), near starvation, beatings by the schoolmasters, and a brief respite in clinic where he discovered Shakespeare. All of this would be merely stereotype in less capable hands, but McCourt's mastery of language manages to make us understand the gentleness, forgiveness, and humor that accompanies misery and enables its protagonists to survive with dignity. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

This is a memoir by a New York City high school teacher. 'Born to Irish immigrants in Depression-era Brooklyn, McCourt's mother (Angela) and father. . . return to family in Ireland. . . . A baby sister dies in Brooklyn, and two more brothers die in Ireland. . . . [McCourt suffers from] afflictions brought on by the starvation and squalor in his family's . . . Limerick slum, including a bout of typhoid. -- Commonweal

Astonishingly vivid...Frank McCourt's life, and his searing telling of it, reveals all we need to know about being human.
—The Detroit Free Press

The power of this memoir is that it makes you believe the claim: that despite the rags, and hunger and pain, love and strength do come out of misery - as well as a page turner of a book. And though the experience it tells of was individual, the point - and the story - is universal.
— Vanessa V. Friedman, Entertainment Weekly

A powerful, exquisitely written debut, a recollection of the author's miserable childhood in the slums of Limerick, Ireland, during the Depression and WW II. McCourt was born in Brooklyn in 1930 but returned to Ireland with his family at the age of four. He describes, not without humor, scenes of hunger, illness, filth, and deprivation that would have given Dickens pause. His shiftless loquacious alcoholic father, Malachy, rarely worked; when he did he usually drank his wages, leaving his wife, Angela, to beg from local churches and charity organizations. McCourt remembers his little sister dying in his mother's arms. Then Oliver, one of the twins, got sick and died. McCourt himself nearly died of typhoid fever when he was 10. As awful and neglectful as his father could be, there were also heart-rendingly tender moments: Unable to pay for a doctor and fearful of losing yet another child when the youngest is almost suffocating from a cold, his father places his "mouth on the little nose...sucking the bad stuff out of Michael's head." Malachy fled to do war work in England but failed to send any money home, leaving his wife and children, already living in squalor, to further fend for themselves. They stole and begged and tore wood from the walls to burn in the stove. Forced to move in with an abusive cousin, McCourt became aware that the man and his mother were having "the excitement" up there in their grubby loft. After taking a beating from the man, McCourt ran away to stay with an uncle and spent his teens alternating between petty crime and odd jobs. Eventually he made his way, once again, to America. An extraordinary work in every way. McCourt magically retrieves love, dignity,and humor from a childhood of hunger, loss, and pain.

"A classic modern memoir...stunning."

"Frank McCourt's lyrical Irish voice will draw comparisons to Joyce. It's that seductive, that hilarious."

"A spellbinding memoir of childhood that swerves flawlessly between aching sadness and desperate humor...a work of lasting beauty."

"A monument to the self-perpetuating power of the human spirit...an accomplished, authoritative, and shimmering example of the memoirist's art."

"This memoir is an instant classic of the genre...good enough to be the capstone of a distinguished writing career; let's hope it's only the beginning of Frank McCourt's."

"Irish American Magazine Frank McCourt has examined his ferocious childhood, walked around it, relived it, and with skill and care and generosity of heart, has transformed it into a triumphant work of art. This book will be read when all of us are gone."

"The power of this memoir is that it makes you believe the claim: that despite the rags and hunger and pain, love and strength do come out of misery — as well as a page-turner of a book. And though the experience it tells of was individual, the point — and the story — is universal."

"Angela's Ashes is a chronicle of grown-ups at the mercy of life and children at the mercy of grown-ups, and it is such a marriage of pathos and humor that you never know whether to weep or roar — and find yourself doing both at once. Fear not: it ends happily; but all along, through each fresh horror of the narrative, you win be made happy by some of the most truly marvelous writing you will ever encounter. McCourt deserves whatever glittering prizes are lying around. Give the man a Prix de Rome, a Croix de Guerre, a Pulitzer, a Nobel, a Templeton — and while you're at it pull him another Guinness!"

"Every once in a while, a lucky reader comes across a book that makes an indelible impression, a book you immediately want to share with everyone around you....Frank McCourt's life, and his searing telling of it, reveal all we need to know about being human."

Michiko Kakutani The New York Times The reader of this stunning memoir can only hope that Mr. McCourt will set down the story of his subsequent adventures in America in another book. Angela's Ashes is so good it deserves a sequel.

Malcom Jones, Jr. Newsweek 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.

Frank McCourt’s memoirs of his impoverished childhood shows his great humanity. When he delivers his story directly to the listener, we are transported. We weep and laugh. The production shows the wonderful dynamism of an audiobook performance. McCourt sings the songs his mother sang. He chants the patriotic ballads his father woke him up with. His clarity of voice and depth of feeling are delivered directly. Don’t miss this, it’s an exceptional audiobook. R.F.W. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine