Frank McCourt's memoir gained lots of attention worldwide. It is a story of how a family had lived a poor life. Frank the author is the eldest among his 6 siblings, on which 3 died. His childhood took place in Limerick, a place in Ireland. Frank's family had to live in a lane near a lavatory, which people on the neighborhood throw away their buckets. His father is a drunkard and would spend all his money for pints. This is a memoir where you will feel grateful about your life. How well you did not see and took advantage of the things you have. You will appreciate the little things in life.

How Good Is Your Childhood

Made me realize I am lucky enough to have the basic needs other people strive to have.

The author recounts his childhood in Depression-era Brooklyn as the child of Irish immigrants who decide to return to worse poverty in Ireland when his infant sister dies. 40,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo. First serial, The New Yorker.

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Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic. "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. 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 eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.

Angela's Ashes

How Good Is Your Childhood

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CURATOR'S NOTE

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