Book Review: Angela's Ashes

Ever since Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes, could recall, he had lived in the damp, dark underbelly of the impoverished world. He began an early career as a street beggar and repeatedly learned to cope as he watched his younger siblings die off. With this said, it is eminent from the very start that Frank is a strong and patient young man, just simply wanting to make something of himself to make the world proud.

The time at which Frank was born, was one of great confusion as well as immense loss. Being the child of immigrated Irish parents living in New York City, it became clearly obvious to him early on, that life wasn’t a walk in the park. Night after night he had to put up with his drunken father stumble in from a night on the town, drinking the dole away, and making him and his siblings “stand attention in the kitchen and promise to die for Ireland.” (p39)

It is because of the lack of parenting and positive influence throughout the course of Frank McCourt’s lifetime that one would normally assume that he would amount to nothing when he was older. However, Frank proved to be quite the contrary, and managed to accomplish his dreams of coming back to America. Throughout the entire story, Frank continues to take his audience captive by continuously surprising them with his hard-working and determined attitude towards life. Perhaps it is because he has seen the consequences of lethargy from looking at his parents, and decided that he was going to take the high road, and create peace, rather than sitting around and waiting for it to come knocking on his doorstep.

Upon reading his story, one should come back from it and feel inspired, or rather invigorated with the notion that, you too can do what you set out to do, no matter how great the challenge may appear. I must commend Frank McCourt for using the sympathy and emotions of his audience in order to get message of how vital determination truly is. This is partly why I feel as though Frank McCourt is more creative with his hidden messages than he lets on in through his writing.

Unfortunately, there were flaws to Mr. McCourt's writing technique. Although the use of the child’s voice, no doubt emphasized the emotions that the reader felt throughout the story, but it also created confusion and misunderstandings between writer and audience. For instance, when reading experts such as, “There’s a knock at the door, Mr. MacAdory. Och, Malachy, for God’s sake, it’s three in the morning. You have the whole house woke with singing. Och, Dan I’m only teaching the boys to die for Ireland. You can teach them to die for Ireland in the daytime.” (p41) it often times takes a few reads over to fully understand who is speaking to whom, and what each person is saying. Therefore, even though his use of his inner child is undoubtedly vital to his memoir, it seems as though it takes over the story and at times, creates more confusion than comprehension.