5/5 A TRIUMPH OF THE SPIRIT. DEEP, SAD, WELL DONE.
  by Steve Guardala (?????)
The author begins his memoir with the voice of a narrator: describing people, events, etc. But, from the first chapter he slowly transitions into a man remembering & than goes back to when he was a boy. The slideshow of imagery & the depth of details made this a great read, despite the often brutal sadness of the story.

The innocence of a young boy of say 8 or 9 is experienced here like in no other book I have read. The young boy finds himself talking with "the angel of the seventh step," & wishing to hear stories of his mythical hero "Cuchulain." When the boy learns something for the first time, so does the reader. While he ages, his vocabulary grows as does his views of the world around him which starts to make more sense to him, no matter how unsettling.

The reader feels Frankie's angst when his alcoholic father comes home drunk after drinking his paycheck away. The descriptions of the strict Catholic school alone where he was not allowed to even ask a question in class made it seem more like a prison than a place to seek "knowledge & comfort." The living conditions in the Limerick of the 1930's-40's Ireland were truly on a third world level. Their home would flood in Winter, & the many family homes they lived in when they could not afford their rent are gut wrenchingly vivid.

The most poignant emotions are from Frankie's mother Angela.
The reader can feel her desperation & frustration with her useless husband, who often failed to keep a job because of his boozing.
Her anguish that she could not clothe or feed her sons, & her other children who were "dead & gone," & her feelings of shame that she had to borrow & beg in order to keep her family alive leap off the pages.
The dialogue & story captures the imagination, one can feel the chill of damp air & the sickness it brings. This book has it all, the sorrow, heartache, want, humor, & slivers of hope.

5/5 Transcendent Writing
  by riverlady (Pittsburgh, PA United States)
I have recently re-read Angela's Ashes for a class assignment in which I had to compare a book with the film version of the same story, and I was again blown away by the beauty of this book. It is a testament to Frank McCourt's enormous talent that he is able to blend such sad situations with such delightful humor. He is masterful in the way he narrates the story from the point-of-view of a child, with his outlook and insights growing as the character (Frank himself) matures, similar to the approach that Dickens used in "David Copperfield."

"Angela's Ashes" is a modern-day classic - one that I'm sure I will re-read every few years, just to hear the magical and shimmering prose in my ears again and again.

5/5 Angela's Ashes
  by Nicholas Brown
Angela's Ashes, Frank's McCourt's New York Times Best Selling Memoir, centers on the cold, hard life of a poor Irish Catholic family. Frank McCourt, the oldest child, tells the story of his family in Ireland and their unfortunate poverty and depression. The father is a mean, cold-hearted man who constantly spends his and his children's money on liquor for himself. The mother, Angela, is without a doubt the backbone of the family; she makes sure they eat and worries about the rent and the well-being of her children. Throughout the story Angela teaches her children the importance of pride and dignity. The ill-starred family is continually struck with the death of very young family members. Even though several children die from starvation and cold before the age of five, McCourt manages to portray these tragedies and shows the family's ability to move on with life. Although the memoir, in general, is an incredibly sad one, the humor of McCourt's style makes the book bearable. Because McCourt's writing style is so descriptive, the reader is able to feel the families sorrow and unhappiness, and we see the world in which they live. Unfortunately, Angela's Ashes did not shine through in the recent holiday film released by Paramount. The film showed the importance of McCourt's humor by not incorporating it into the adaptation. Without this humor, the film was dark, sad, ugly and unbearable. The book on the other hand, may be sad, but is at the same time uplifting.

5/5 Couldn't put it down
  by BookWorm
I avoided this book for two reasons. The hype. More often than not I am disappointed by highly-hyped books and movies. And, I thought it would depress and exhaust me. But as with Betty Smith's A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, you become so engrossed with the characters that you aren't weighed down by the crushing poverty. It almost seems an afterthought, a tiny detail, yet it is what forms the characters. Both of these books, while written 60 years apart, are written beautifully and skillfully.

5/5 Angela's Ashes
  by Collin Wash
Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes is a compelling story of death, depression, and extreme poverty in the lanes of Limerick, Ireland. The way McCourt tells the story through his eyes and explains his thoughts of the life in the lanes, and his experiances in America and Ireland. Though the whole book carry's an "I Feel Sorry" feeling with it, the few happy experiances balance the sadness and happiness. Some of the feelings he expresses are with such detail that you feel the hunger, or the sadness, and even the happiness, from which you learn how to be happy again. Some sexual refrences are mentioned, but they help describe his feelings and experiances with the opposite sex. A must have for the interested in irish history and truely understanding what poverty is with a first hand explanation.