Title

Angela's ashes : a memoir

Description

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive 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. So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy, exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling, does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Identifier

585023

684874350

Creator

McCourt, Frank

Source

Brian Lamb Booknotes Collection

Gift of Brian Lamb, 2011.

Catalog record

Language

eng

Date

1996

Program air date: August 31, 1997

Publisher

Scribner

George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections & Archives

Text

Transcription of Annotations
Notes on front endpaper: Songs about Kevin Berry, Roddy McCorley. Booknotes post-it note: McCourt still for in is "Angela's ashes." Notes on front fly sheet: Describe living conditions in Brooklyn (Classon Ave. New York). Dad's drinking! Your father's got a problem. "The Irish Thing." Do you Frank me drink. Must promise to die for Ireland. "Marry someone from the North." Kevin Berry. Roddy McCorley. Angela's house is dirty-smells. How do you know about the letter to Angela's mother p 45. Tea, Bread, Eggs. Underlinings/Notes: Underlinings: Family background, neighbors, grandmother sent money for family to return to Ireland, Dublin, guards in barracks take up collection to cover train fare to Limerick. Notes: "I was 4," "new baby Margaret," "bananas," "Margaret dies," "the smell of this place," "money for the baby," "IRA man, Charles Heggarty," "lice."

Subject

"McCourt family."

"McCourt, Frank--Family."

"Irish Americans--Biography."

"Irish Americans--Ireland--Limerick (Limerick)--Biography."

Relation

Original Booknotes interview

Rights

This work may be protected by copyright laws and is provided for educational and research purposes only. Any infringing use may be subject to disciplinary action and/or civil or criminal liability as provided by law. If you believe that you are the rights-holder and object to Mason’s use of this image, please contact speccoll@gmu.edu.