McCourt family. - Angelas ashes: a memoir

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Praise for Angelas Ashes:

This memoir is an instant classic of the genre... good enough to be the capstone of a distinguished writing career; lets hope its only the beginning of Frank McCourts.

Nina King, The Washington Post Book World

Frank McCourts lyrical Irish voice will draw comparisons to Joyce. Its that seductive, that hilarious.

Mary Karr

Angelas 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 roarand find yourself doing both at once. Fear not: it ends happily; but all along, through each fresh horror of the narrative, you will 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 Templetonand while youre at it pull him another Guinness!

Thomas Cahill

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.

Pete Hamill, Irish American Magazine

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 miseryas well as a page-turner of a book. And though the experience it tells of was individual, the pointand the storyis universal.

Vanessa V. Friedman, Entertainment Weekly

I was moved and dazzled by the somber and lively beauty of this book; it is a story of survival and growth beyond all odds, a chronicle of surprising triumphs, written in a language that is always itself triumphant.

Mary Gordon

It is only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he leaves them wanting more when hes done. With Angelas Ashes, McCourt proves himself one of the very best.

Malcolm Jones, Jr., Newsweek

McCourt weaves tales with the bewitching charm of Irelands fabled storytellers.

Robert Sullivan, The New York Times Magazine

Frank McCourt is a writer whose unflinching eye for family tragedy is matched only by his capacious heart in forgiving it. Having waited a half-century to tell his tale, McCourt uses his ripened talent to reincarnate the desperate Ireland of his boyhood, a boyhood shaped by the hunger for both material and intellectual sustenance. Any reader with an immigrant in his past cannot help but find his own forebears in Angelas Ashes.

Samuel Freedman

His prose is so clear a reader can smell the raindrops.

Patricia OHaire, Daily News

McCourts writing resembles the sweet purity of a boys choir. A voice clear, bright and innocent. Frank McCourt has seen hell, but found angels in his heart. This is a work which will bring satisfying tears to your eyes and critics to their feet.

Heddy-Dale Matthias, The Clarion-Ledger

What is it that transforms a childhood blighted by poverty, death and disease into a story that shines with love and leaps off the page in language of rare energy, music and humor? In the case of Angelas Ashes, I think it must be Frank McCourts soul. This memoir is the best Ive read in years, and Im putting it on the small shelf in the company of the few books I dont lendlest theyre gone when I want them again.

Kathryn Harrison

A pen picture of a lost generationlost to early death and emigration.

May Morrissey, Los Angeles Times

Angelas Ashes is a joy to read.

Alix Madrigal, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

Angelas Ashes contains some of the loveliest language Ive 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 Today

Frank McCourts book is deeply moving, for his searing story is true. No one has ever written about poverty or childhood like this. That Frank McCourt lived to tell the tale is amazing. That he could create out of such squalor and misery a flawless masterpiece is nothing short of miraculous.

Mary Breasted

A story so immediateso gripping in its daily despairs, stolen smokes and blessed humorthat you want to thank God young Frankie McCourt survived it in part so he could write the book.

Gail Caldwell, The Boston Sunday Globe

Frank McCourt (right front) in the playground of Leamys School in Limerick, Ireland, circa 1938 .

SCRIBNER

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Copyright 1996 by Frank McCourt

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

First Scribner trade paperback edition 2003

SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

Designed by Brooke Zimmer

Cover design by John Fontana

Cover photograph Culver Pictures, Inc.

Text set in Adobe Bembo

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Scribner edition as follows:

McCourt, Frank.

Angelas ashes: a memoir/Frank McCourt.

p. cm.

. Irish AmericansBiography.. Irish AmericansIrelandLimerick (Limerick)Biography.. McCourt family.. McCourt, FrankFamily.. Limerick (Limerick, Ireland)Biography. I. Title.

E.I.M 117 1996

929'.2'0899162073 dc 965335

CIP

ISBN-13: 978-0-684-87435-7

ISBN-10: 0-684-87435-0

ISBN-13: 978-0-684-84267-7 (Pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-684-84267-X (Pbk)

ISBN-13: 9780684864839 (eBook)

This book is dedicated to my brothers,
Malachy, Michael, Alphonsus.
I learn from you, I admire you and I love you.

This is a small hymn to an exaltation of women.

Rlene Dahlberg fanned the embers.

Lisa Schwarzbaum read early pages and encouraged me. Mary Breasted Smyth, elegant novelist herself, read the first third and passed it on to Molly Friedrich, who became my agent and thought that Nan Graham, Editor-in-Chief at Scribner, would be just the right person to put the book on the road. And Molly was right.

My daughter, Maggie, has shown me how life can be a grand adventure, while exquisite moments with my granddaughter, Chiara, have helped me recall a small childs wonder. My wife, Ellen, listened while I read and cheered me to the final page.

I am blessed among men.