A Review of Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

Angela's Ashes is a novel about a boy who was born in America but grew up in Ireland. Frank McCourt's family was poor in New York. It only got worse when they retreated back to Limerick, where his mother grew up. His story spans sixteen years, from ages three to nineteen, during which he undergoes more trials and tribulations than most people do in a lifetime. Angela's Ashes is a coming of age story, and is written in such a way that anyone can relate to Frank, even if his or her childhood was completely different, because there are universal things that run through every child's life. Despite the fact that the book is rife with tragic events one after another, the narrative is given in such a way that it is not a sad book. It is certainly not joyous, but it just is, in only the way a child's life could just be. McCourt writes, "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived 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." Every child believes that their childhood is normal, at least at first, so I think that's why the sad parts don't seem as sad as stories like McCourt's when told from an adult point of view. When adults write about things that affect them strongly, they know that it's not an everyday occurrence.

The most prominent feature in this memoir was the use of voice. McCourt sounds like a child when he is a child, and as he ages in the book, so does the voice. The first time we see Frank, he is on a teeter-totter with his younger brother Malachy outside the building where they live in New York City.

"I'm on the playground on Classon Avenue in Brooklyn with my brother, Malachy. He's two, I'm three. We're on the seesaw.
Up, down, up, down.
Malachy goes up.
I get off.
Malachy goes down. Seesaw hits the ground. He screams. His hand is on his mouth and there's blood.
Oh, God. Blood is bad. My mother will kill me."

The sentences are short and staccato, like a child is really saying them, which allows the reader to believe that they are truly hearing the story from a little boy's point of view. There is no hostile thought on Frank's part about making his brother fall, but he does it regardless, ad seems to feel no remorse, or even understand that it's his fault. We can see Frank grow older when he is thinking about boys who are making fun of him in school when he has a job to help his mother. "They're ignorant. They don't know I spent the day delivering hundredweights of coal and turf. They don't know I'm a man."

He shows that he is drawing conclusions, cause and effect, and learning about social interaction.

Frank's age is also shown well through voice when his siblings die, first his baby sister in New York when he is three or four, then his younger twin brothers in Limerick five years later. When Margaret dies, all Frank wants is for her to be there for him to take care of, and all he understands is that she's not. When his brothers both die, he actually thinks about how cold they will be in their coffins under the ground and he is upset about not being able to bring a blanket to one of them. My brothers are dead and my sister is dead and I wonder if they died for Ireland or the Faith. "Dad says they were too young to die for anything. Mam says it was disease and starvation and him never having a job. Dad says, Och, Angela, puts on his cap and goes for a long walk." McCourt's use of voice was very effective in reminding the reader that the story was being told from a child's perspective, but his use of quoting what he heard the adults saying made it so that the reader wasn't bogged down by it.

Coming of age stories are what many classic tales are made of. They draw people in, not because they are exciting stories, but because they are stories that can be related back to one's self and learned from. Throughout the book, the family goes through sickness, severe poverty, and destitute housing where the first floor of the house floods for most of the year. By pulling experience from the McCourt family, perhaps someone will learn patience, charity, or suffering unlike their own. I found much of the story interesting because like McCourt, I had a Catholic childhood, though his was stricter than mine. I recognized many things he participated in at church, like First Communion, Confession, and Confirmation, so I know about what age he is and what he is going through at those times, and I only know how I dealt with it. Coming of age stories leave no reader behind, because everyone comes of age (in their own way).

I have only seen a few books where no quotes are used to mark speech. I suppose it is the choice of the author, a stylistic choice. McCourt effectively leaves the quotations out, which gives a certain detached feeling to the story, especially when Frank is young. We also aren't given many characters because of it, since everything is in one piece and all from Frank's point of view. There are many people he interacts with, but it never occurs to the reader to wonder about the other people, because since Frank isn't there, neither are you. Paragraph breaks are still used to show conversation.

Truth remains at the heart of this memoir like all others. McCourt did not publish Angela's Ashes until his mother (Angela) died. There are many things in the book that would not have shone well upon her, and I understand why he would take such measures, but he does still tell the truth about his situation and what his mother did and didn't do. There seems to be no resentful tone in the text, though. It is something that every memoir writer will have to decide eventually. Many things that we may want to write about will be about our parents, since they are so important in the first part of our lives. They shape us into who we are, and sometimes, we resent them for it. The truth can hurt, as McCourt obviously realized.

How much truth could a 3-year-old tell, and decades later, how much could he really recall? I think the book calls for a measure of suspended disbelief, because regardless of how well the voice is done, most people don't remember concise events that early in life. Did McCourt have a spotless memory, or did he piecemeal events together and try to make them make sense? My vote would be with the latter of the two. It's not that McCourt was not telling the truth, but I think that he probably remembered what he could, and filled in what he could not remember with other memories, or maybe with things Malachy told him later. He couldn't have kept a journal in his life even though he was more educated than many people in the same situation he was in, so I can only attribute to his excellent memory and creativity in 'remembering' what he didn't actually know for sure. The incident on the teeter-totter I could understand, but he recalls long conversations, and I assume he only rewrote them as best he could.

In the end, does it matter how much he knew as a three-year-old? He knew enough to write a memoir, and so he did, and he did so quite well. His views surely changed in the world between events and writing, so the interpretation of some of the events is an adult's with a child's voice. What we remember as being very tall when we are young may seem very small when someone is much older, and so it is up to the writer of the memoir to decide how best to tell his story in the way he needs to say it. His slant is just that-his.