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Angela's Ashes: A Memoir (Paperback) (平装)
by Frank McCourt
| Category:
Memoir, Fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
MSL price:
¥ 158.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
MSL Pointer Review:
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.
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 15 items |
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Linnea Lannon (Detroit Free Press) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-23 00:00>
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. |
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Michiko Kakutani (The New York Times) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-23 00:00>
A classic modern memoir...stunning.
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People (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-23 00:00>
A splendid memoir, both funny and forgiving.
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Peter Finn (The Philadelphia Inquirer) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-23 00:00>
A spellbinding memoir of childhood that swerves flawlessly between aching sadness and desperate humor...a work of lasting beauty.
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Margaria Fichtner (The Miami Herald) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-23 00:00>
...a monument to the self-perpetuating power of the human spirit...an accomplished, authoritative, and shimmering example of the memoirist's art.
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T. Galvan (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-24 00:00>
This memoir is one of the most captivitating stories I have yet to encounter. In it, Frank tells the story of his childhood in Ireland with an alcoholic father, dying siblings, poverty, and a mother with her own problems. The degree of hardship will tug on anyone's heart and encourage with Frank's constant hope for something better.
However, what I found most refreshing about this memoir was Frank McCourt's earliest memories of his childhood. He manages to convey these memories exactly how I imagine a child would view them. It almost seems as if he started writing this at the age of three. Although I cannot relate to the abject poverty and hardship the author experienced, I find myself relating to the child he portrays. Mr. McCourt reminds us all of those quirky behaviors and thought patterns that we all experience as a child.
I wholeheartedly recommend this to everyone.
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Jibin George (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-24 00:00>
This book focused on the struggle that Irish children had to face after coming to America. The story revolved around the central character Malachy. This book amplified the pain and the suffering these kids had to face.It showed how hard it was for them to get a piece of bread. It focused on the mother's struggle and the father's carelessness, for the mother worked hard to feed her kids while the father got drunk and wasted the money. Frank Mccourt painted a vivid image of a restless childhood.It showed the creativity of the writer's knowledge on the subject. The book sums up the life of a typical immigrant who migrated in the year 1940.
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Cooperandre (MSL quote), Fullerton, CA USA
<2007-01-24 00:00>
Angela's Ashes is tragically wonderful, as seen through the eyes of a child coping and becoming a young adult filled with despair, poverty, death, and an alcoholic, jobless father.
I've read this book twice and each time I felt it hard to put the book down, after reading Angela's Ashes the first time, I vacationed in Ireland and toured Limerick, this has made Angela's Ashes even more meaningful for me.
Even though this book is very sad, there are a few humorous parts in it, and just like Frank McCourt writes in the first page "the happy childhood is hardly worth your while" kind of sets this book off to relive all that McCourt lived through and survived. I whole-heartedly recommend this book.
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Luc Reynaert (MSL quote), Beernem, Belgium
<2007-01-24 00:00>
These harsh memoirs of a miserable Irish catholic childhood centre around a totally irresponsible alcoholic, but catholic, father. Bawling nationalist slogans, he prefers to be drowned in alcohol, rather than to buy food for his wife and many children: 'I didn't know how a man in his right mind can leave a wife and family to starve and shiver in a Limerick winter.'
This suicidal behaviour even prevents his children to have a good education, which is a vital national power factor.
But otherwise, he remains through and through a 'good' catholic (you may have sex, but it must be with profit).
His belief is however heavily tainted by protestant fatalism: 'Dear God, this is what you want, isn't it? You want my son Eugene. You took his brother, Oliver. You took his sister, Margaret. Dear God above, I don't know why children have to die, but that is Your will.'
The overall situation in Ireland before World War II was appalling: unemployment, hunger, poverty, alcoholism, illnesses, a high rate of child mortality, the hypocrisy of politicians, the rich and the clergy.
Children fought among themselves for apple peels. Some were barefoot the whole year long.
Catholic fundamentalism and sexual repression were more important than food, shelter and education.
The school system for the poor was disastrous, run by brutal and stupid teachers, except one: 'this free independent Ireland that keeps a class system foisted on us by the English, that are throwing our talented children on the dungheap.'
Only a few members of the lower classes saw through the rampant Pharisaism. One of them was an uncle of the author who teached him a fundamental lesson for confronting life: 'Make up your own mind.'
Against all odds, the author took his fate in his own hands.
This is a deeply moving and desperate book about the struggle for survival in a family living just above the level of total destitution.
Not to be missed.
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F. A. Bayona (MSL quote), Illinois
<2007-01-24 00:00>
In Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt describes his childhood in the impoverished town of Limerick with such lyricism and tongue-in-cheek retellings that the reader wants to laugh, cry, and raise an eyebrow in disbelief all at the same time. McCourt first lays down the foundations of his story in the events.
The book moves rather quickly from event to event: the reader sees his father and mother mourning over the death of their young daughter in America and then sees the entire family sleeping in a prison in Ireland because they have no money. McCourt so wonderfully recounts his memories, such as his experiences in the hospital to his adventures as a mail courier, with the same tone and opinions of his younger self that the reader can almost hear the young Francis talk to the angel on the seventh step or read aloud his composition to his class. McCourt manages to describe the most dismal situation with a tongue-in-cheek comment or an optimistic ending. Along with the tone, the imagery in this novel is vivid.
McCourt recounts such unique details, such as the newspaper wrapping of a hog's head falling apart to children competing for a teacher's apple peelings, that the reader is pulled into his life because it so different from their own and because there is so much emotion invested in these details. McCourt makes sure that when he describes his life, it will be totally singular in its description.
Overall, Angela's Ashes was simply amazing. Even though the reader is swept into a unique childhood full of hunger and starvation, McCourt manages to a "silver lining" in his despair.
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1 2 | Total 2 pages 15 items |
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