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Angela's Ashes
- Narrated by: Frank McCourt, Jeannette Walls - introduction
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
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Publisher's summary
Pulitzer Prize, Biography/Autobiography, 1997
National Book Critics Circle, Biography/Autobiography, 1997
Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, movingly read in his own voice, bears all the marks of a classic. Born in Depression-era Brooklyn to Irish immigrant parents, Frank was later raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. His mother, Angela, had no money to feed her children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely worked, and when he did, he drank his wages. Angela's Ashes is the story of how Frank endured - wearing shoes repaired with tires, begging for a pig's head for Christmas dinner, and searching the pubs for his father - a tale he relates with eloquence, exuberance, and remarkable forgiveness.
Listen to Frank McCourt talk about this book on C-SPAN's Booknotes (7/11/97).
Critic reviews
"Frank McCourt is a marvelous writer whose words are made all the better when he reads them aloud..." (Bookpage)
"...one of the best I've heard in years." (The Boston Globe)
"...so good it deserves a sequel" (The New York Times)
"Here we have the stereotypical Irish characters - the drunken poet father; the all-suffering mother; the miserable, hungry kids being turned away by a haughty Church - all made three-dimensional and brought fully to life by both McCourt's language and his loving, intimate narration.... Grim it is - but the tale and its teller transcend the poverty - and so does the listener, who glories in the story and voice from beginning to end." (AudioFile)
Featured Article: The Best Memoirs to Make You Laugh, Cry, and Think
The memoir, as an art form, is one of the most difficult and complex to pull off. That’s why these titles are so impressive: not only are they excellent works in their own right, but they’ve achieved cultural acclaim, resonating with listeners of different ages, genders, races, religions, and identities. Often narrated by the authors themselves, these audiobooks allow listeners to be immersed in each story and feel all of the raw and unfiltered emotion that comes with them.
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Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: In a house full of secrets, two babies - one light-skinned, the other dark - are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town. In the aftermath, the farm's inhabitants are forced to contend with their complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured.
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Great read!
- By S. Clay on 11-01-17
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The Other Side of Paradise
- A Memoir
- By: Staceyann Chin
- Narrated by: Staceyann Chin
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Stacyann Chin has appeared on television and radio, including The Oprah Winfrey Show , CNN, and PBS, discussing issues of race and sexuality. But it is her extraordinary voice that launched her career as a performer, poet, and activist. Here, she shares her unforgettable story of triumph against all odds in this brave and fiercely candid memoir.
No one knew Staceyann's mother was pregnant until a dangerously small baby was born on the floor of her grandmother's house in Jamaica, on Christmas Day.
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Incredible life, incredible performer
- By RyRy on 10-21-19
By: Staceyann Chin
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The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
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Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
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Caramelo
- By: Sandra Cisneros
- Narrated by: Sandra Cisneros
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Lala Reyes’ grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl-makers. The striped (caramelo) is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala’s possession. The novel opens with the Reyes’ annual car trip - a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels - from Chicago to “the other side”, Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family’s stories, separating the truth from the “healthy lies” that have ricocheted from one generation to the next.
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Love, family, history, and fantasy, Caramelo
- By Michele on 08-07-20
By: Sandra Cisneros
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Owls Do Cry
- By: Janet Frame
- Narrated by: Heather Bolton
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Owls Do Cry is one of the classics of New Zealand literature, and has remained in print continuously for 50 years. A fiftieth anniversary edition was published in 2007.
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well told but a wee bit depressing.
- By Muzza on 11-03-19
By: Janet Frame
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Beyond the Pale
- By: Elana Dykewomon
- Narrated by: Elana Dykewomon
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Beyond the Pale - winner of the Lambda Literary Award - tells the stories of two Jewish women living through times of darkness and inhumanity in the early 20th century, capturing their undaunted love and courage in luminous and moving prose. The richly textured novel details Gutke Gurvich's odyssey from her apprenticeship as a midwife in a Russian shtetl to her work in the suffrage movement in New York.
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great historical fiction with a lesbian twist
- By Kelly on 11-25-13
By: Elana Dykewomon
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Roman's Journey
- An Extraordinary Odyssey of Holocaust Survival
- By: Roman Halter
- Narrated by: Robin Sachs
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Roman Halter was a spirited, optimistic schoolboy in 1939 when he and his family gathered behind the curtains to watch the Volksdeutsche (German Polish) neighbors of their small town in western Poland greet the arrival of Hitler's armies with kisses and swastika flags. Within days, the family home had been seized, 12-year-old Roman had become a slave of the local SS chief, and, returning from an errand, he silently witnessed his Jewish classmates being bayoneted to death by soldiers at the edge of town. So began his remarkable six-year journey through some of the darkest caverns of Nazi Europe....
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Could not finish!!!!
- By Natalie Rohde on 02-23-16
By: Roman Halter
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Pennies for Hitler
- By: Jackie French
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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It's 1939, and for Georg, son of an English academic living in Germany, life is full of cream cakes and loving parents. It is also a time when his teacher measures the pupils' heads to see which of them have the most 'Aryan'- shaped heads. But when a university graduation ceremony turns into a pro-Nazi demonstration, Georg is smuggled out of Germany to war-torn London and then across enemy seas to Australia where he must forget his past and who he is in order to survive. Hatred is contagious, but Georg finds that kindness can be, too.
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This could be a Bryce Courtenay novel
- By K Cornwinkle on 07-02-14
By: Jackie French
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Trumpet
- By: Jackie Kay
- Narrated by: Cathleen McCarron
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The death of legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody exposes an extraordinary secret. Unbeknown to all but his wife Millie, Joss was a woman living as a man. The discovery is most devastating for their adopted son, Colman, whose bewildered fury brings the press to the doorstep and sends his grieving mother to the sanctuary of a remote Scottish village. Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize, Trumpet by Jackie Kay is a starkly beautiful modern classic about the lengths to which people will go for love.
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Beautiful and True
- By Colin on 05-24-17
By: Jackie Kay
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The Girl with the Louding Voice
- A Read with Jenna Pick (A Novel)
- By: Abi Daré
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The unforgettable, inspiring story of a teenage girl growing up in a rural Nigerian village who longs to get an education so that she can find her “louding voice” and speak up for herself, The Girl with the Louding Voice is a simultaneously heartbreaking and triumphant tale about the power of fighting for your dreams.
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A must HEAR!
- By Michelle on 03-09-20
By: Abi Daré
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Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
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MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
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For the teachers
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During the course of his life, Malachy McCourt practically invented the singles bar and was a pioneer in talk radio, a soap opera star, a best-selling author, a gold smuggler, a political activist, and a candidate for governor of the state of New York. It seems that the only two things he hasn't done are stick his head into a lion's mouth and die. Since he is allergic to cats, he decided to write about the great hereafter and answer the question on most minds: What's so great about it anyhow?
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What a life lived and shared!
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The recently passed award-winning author of the memoirs Angela'a Ashes and 'Tis discusses his writing, his life, and teaching as a profession. He reads from Teacher Man: A Memoir.
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God Bless Frank McCourt!
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Teacher Man
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Now here at last, is McCourt's long-awaited audiobook about how his thirty-year teaching career shaped his second act as a writer. Teacher Man is also an urgent tribute to teachers everywhere. In bold and spirited prose featuring his irreverent wit and heartbreaking honesty, McCourt records the trials, triumphs, and surprises he faces in public high schools around New York City.
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Frank McCourt is an entertaining writer and reader
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Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, movingly read in his own voice, bears all the marks of a classic. Born in Depression-era Brooklyn to Irish immigrant parents, Frank was later raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. His mother, Angela, had no money to feed her children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely worked, and when he did, he drank his wages. Angela's Ashes is the story of how Frank endured.
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ABRIDGED VERSION
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For the teachers
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During the course of his life, Malachy McCourt practically invented the singles bar and was a pioneer in talk radio, a soap opera star, a best-selling author, a gold smuggler, a political activist, and a candidate for governor of the state of New York. It seems that the only two things he hasn't done are stick his head into a lion's mouth and die. Since he is allergic to cats, he decided to write about the great hereafter and answer the question on most minds: What's so great about it anyhow?
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What a life lived and shared!
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The recently passed award-winning author of the memoirs Angela'a Ashes and 'Tis discusses his writing, his life, and teaching as a profession. He reads from Teacher Man: A Memoir.
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Frank McCourt is an entertaining writer and reader
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Excellent story!
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A BETTER BOOK THAN "THE GLASS CASTLE"
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LOVE!
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Anna is at a stage of her life when she's beginning to wonder who she really is. She has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up, and her mother - the only parent who raised her - is dead. Searching through her mother's belongings one day, Anna finds clues about the African father she never knew. His student diaries chronicle his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. Anna discovers that he eventually became the president - some would say dictator - of a small nation in West Africa. And he is still alive.
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Really addictive!
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What's normal?
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Welcome to the summer of 1985 in Philadelphia, when the city was rocked—in almost every sense of the word—by two unprecedented events: Mayor W. Wilson Goode’s May 13 decision to bomb the headquarters of MOVE, a controversial Philadelphia-based radical communal organization, and the July 13 Live Aid concert, where international rock royalty convened in Philly to raise money for victims of the Ethiopian famine. Separated by just two months and eight miles, these events would showcase both the best and the worst of the so-called City of Brotherly Love.
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Misleading title and poor execution
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With ribald humor, wit, and incredible insight, Alan seamlessly moves back and forth in time, integrating stories from his childhood in Scotland and his experiences today as the celebrated actor of film, television, and stage. At times suspenseful, at times deeply moving, but always incredibly brave and honest, Not My Father's Son is a powerful story of embracing the best aspects of the past and triumphantly pushing the darkness aside.
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Alphie McCourt, the youngest of the McCourt brothers, reminisces on Christmas past—from his childhood in Limerick to the celebrations of family and friends in New York as an adult with Frank and Malachy.
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When they met at an airport, it was love at first sight. But in time, everything collapsed. As an unnamed but unforgettable woman muses on her life—from meet cute to marriage and parenthood—her recollections inexorably build to a devastating truth. In this shattering performance, Carey Mulligan, star of the critically lauded drama An Education, captivates audiences with playwright Dennis Kelly’s harrowing ruminations on family, ambition, gender, and violence.
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Be aware of the content before listening
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The Silver Star
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It is 1970. "Bean" Holladay is 12 and her sister, Liz, is 15 when their artistic mother, Charlotte, a woman who flees every place she’s ever lived at the first sign of trouble," takes off to find herself." She leaves her girls enough money for food to last a month or two. But when Bean gets home from school one day and sees a police car outside the house, she and Liz board a bus from California to Virginia, where their widowed Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying antebellum mansion that’s been in the family for generations.
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A Bronze Star
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The Pearl Thief
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From the internationally acclaimed best-selling author of Code Name Verity comes a stunning new story of pearls, love and murder. Sixteen-year-old Julie Beaufort-Stuart is returning to her family's ancestral home in Perthshire for one last summer. It is not an idyllic return to childhood. Her grandfather's death has forced the sale of the house and estate, and this will be a summer of good-byes. Not least to the McEwen family - Highland travellers who have been part of the landscape for as long as anyone can remember.
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Freshwater Pearls and Scottish Plaid
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What listeners say about Angela's Ashes
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Karen
- 01-30-03
A classic book *and* a classic audiobook
Sometimes the audio version of a good book can be ruined by a bad reader (too much Broadway or something). And sometimes a good reader can cause a book that's boring on paper to come alive in the audio version. But it's a rare and wonderful combination when a top-notch book is brought to life in a top-notch way by its own author in the audio version, especially if it's a memoir. This is an example of that blessed phenomenon. Some people find Angela's Ashes to be depressing, but I find it to be just the opposite. McCourt's attitude is inspiring. He got through his terrible childhood, and triumphed. The pathos is generously tempered with humor. I love this book, and I love to listen to McCourt himself read it to me.
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161 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Patricia B Tripoli
- 07-04-05
Don't Hesitate, Listen!
I hesitated on getting this book. All I had envisioned about this story, including the picture on the book cover, told me it would be a sad, dark, and depressing tale. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Ethnic tales have always captivated me, but they were usually stories from MY ehtnic background. I am not irish and this tale still cpativated me. The child's perspective was so true ...like not understanding what it meant to die for one's country. And the author was able to bring this out in his own voice so well.
Many literary masterpieces leave me cold. But not this one. I truly understand why the Pulitzer was awarded. Nothing was sugar coated. There were awful things that happened, yet the hope came out. Whether his parents were stupid, or loosers, or just plain ignorant ...they were his parents and he loved them. And they loved him. We should all be so lucky.
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108 people found this helpful
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- karen
- 03-03-13
Best audiobook of all time
I'm supposing that most book lovers have already come across Angela's Ashes by this time -- so many prizes, so many awards, so much well-deserved international acclaim. I read the book when it first came out, loved it so much I then bought the audiotapes -- on cassette -- and listened to them several times over. One time, I remember listening on the long drive from Sacramento to Southern California, and I recall driving into urban Los Angeles crying so hard I could hardly see the road. It's that kind of book -- one that will have you both laughing and crying within the same minute. It's just priceless.
Somewhere along the way the cassettes got lost, so when I saw the book again on Audible, I was delighted. I haven't listened to it for maybe ten years, so it was new to me all over again. One of the delights of this book is seeing yourself reflected in what McCourt writes. My background is about as radically different from his as is possible to to be, for two English-speakers, anyway, but still, there are parts that resonate personally with me so much. When he's talking about his school days, there are time when I feel myself saying, "I remember that!" although of course I don't. Not exactly. But McCourt's book is like that -- it draws you in, and makes his story resonate in your own mind.
Author-read books are always the best, and in this case, McCourt is exceptional. No one can tell his own stories like he can, and you feel you're in the same room with him, listening as he tells you what it was like.
If you haven't read or listened to Angela's Ashes in a while, it's time to do it again. And if you've never come across it before, wow -- are you lucky! To listen to this book for the first time is really a wonderful thing.
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74 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Charles L. Roberts
- 04-03-03
A real page turner
I absolutely loved this book. Be patient at the beginning, as the book is read by an old man from a child's perspective. Once you get used to this, it is a joy. I cried and laughed. Frank's accent makes this book absolutely priceless in audio format. Though I wasn't raised in poverty or with an alcoholic father, I was struck by how much I related to Frank's childhood experiences. His treatment of sex, religion, and the general anxieties that accompany adolescence really hit home with me. This has been one of my favorite books on Audible. Don't forget to get the sequel, 'Tis, as it is also excellent.
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66 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Maarten
- 12-04-03
Thank you for writing, and even more for reading
I have been listening to the book for 10 hours now and still I've got a smile on my face and the tears in my eyes. I gained so much respect for Frank Mccourt. How can a man "walk" back through his "miserable Irish Catholic childhood", (The happy childhood is hardly worthwhile) and be there as if it was yesterday and take YOU there and meet the characters around him as if you could shake their hands - with his Irish accent, simple illustrative words (buckety pram, wee children) respectful impersonations and his sweet warm voice - and make you see that every second of life IS worthwhile.
And for the ones who think the book is depressing: Go and stand beside Francis look through his eyes, he'll make you see. Who said it's easy?
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- Melissa Sherman
- 05-22-03
My take on Angela's Ashes
I don't think this story could have been told better by anyone than this fabulous, funny, sensitive, tell it like it is, writer - the second I finished it I wanted more, and got it with 'Tis..I'm in the middle of 'Tis and can't put it down either!! Is Angela's Ashes one of the most engrossing books ever??? 'Tis....
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- dottie
- 09-15-04
MOST WORTHY OF IT'S PULITZER!!!
I was immediately captivated by Mr. McCort's wonderful speaking voice, which completely drew me into the narrative of his childhood. The subtle humor of this man sprinkled over the adventures and tragedies of his childhood brought laughter and tears, and a vivid comprehension a life beginning in such abject poverty. I recommend this book to anyone who appreciates a historic reality lesson, or has ever or never known love or despair or poverty. Frank McCort is living proof that there is hope for us all!!
Mr. McCort is a marvelous writer and story-teller, and I intend to read every word he has ever written.
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- Jenny
- 11-30-03
A treasure
When I described this book to a friend of mine, she said "Eeeew, sounds depressing." But it wasn't depressing, because of the hope the children and their parents had of a better day, and the love they had for each other despite their many flaws. McCourt is straightforward and honest about his family, showing his father to be loving and attentive, but with an alcohol addiction that is devastating to his family. The author paints accurate portraits of the characters, including himself, and the result is a book rich with humanity, frustration, hope, and humor. To hear it in his own voice is a treat. It's one of those books I almost wish I hadn't read, since I'll never again be able to experience it for the first time. But I'll listen to it again several times, and I suspect I'll find new and interesting things I missed in my original listening. I've recommended it to nearly everyone I know, and I'm surprised I haven't yet been asked to find something else to talk about.
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- Mark
- 11-11-07
Thank you Frank McCourt!
The draw of this book has everything to do with the writer's incredible talent for colorful and moving story telling, and a writing style that comes alive with McCourt's uncomplicated and free flowing Irish accented narration. Frank McCourt's amazing life story is a not just a must-read, but a Classic.
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- Kim
- 03-27-13
Pulitzer Prize winner - totally justified!
It's so wonderful to find myself agreeing with the masses and loving something that the "powers that be" found worthy of such a lofty honor as a Pulitzer Prize. So many times I've taken the bait of an "award winner" only to be bitterly disappointed in the end. There's something about the old-fashioned, whimsical yet heartbreaking truths in this memoir that really touched me in a way that few books ever have. I laughed, almost cried (that would take a miracle), and just lost myself in the world of the U.S. and Ireland in the early 20th century. The tragedy, the hardships, the triumphs are expressed in a way that made me truly care about the people - that rarely happens for me and I really love when a book can take me there. There are so many things to appreciate about this book - you just need to use your credit on it and see for yourself.
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