Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

Or "To Quote Erika, Two Posts Below: I Am Really Very Glad This Isn't My Life."

Angela's Ashes has been on my Everybody-Else-Has-Read-This-So-Why-Haven't-You list (Alongside A Clockwork Orange and The Handmaid's Tale, both of which are now checked off, and 1984 and Farenheit 451, which are not but hopefully will be during this Magical Year. Wow, looking at that list I realized that I really missed out on the dystopian future books in high school. But that's for another post. Back to the Irish.), so when I found it for 25 cents at a thrift store around the corner from my house, I took the world's hint and read it. And I'm glad I did, I think.

The things I liked about Angela's Ashes are all good important things. I appreciated that it was matter-of-fact rather than woe-is-me, although he certainly had more than enough cause to write this memoir as a dramatic weepfest. I appreciated the storytelling - it was completely devoid of flowery description such that it felt as though Frank McCourt were sitting next to you by a fire, telling you his life story. Well, his birth to age 18 story. It painted a vivid, vibrant, touching, darkly funny, and often harrowing portrait of Ireland in the 1930s and '40s. I liked all these things.

The things I didn't like about Angela's Ashes are things that I never like about memoirs. The characters were not rich or particularly developed, because Frank knows everything about them and doesn't need to illustrate it. Sometimes this was interesting, and sometimes it wasn't. Sometimes it allowed me as the reader to fill in the details for myself, but sometimes one of his friends would die and I would forget that friend had even existed. Also, the pacing is strange and the ending abrupt. Which is like life. And that's what memoirs are: stories about life. So I almost feel bad faulting it for that, but I just can't let it go. I just wish it had been paced a bit differently, allowing us to sit longer in some moments than others, rather than every event getting equal treatment.

In the end, I'd say I recommend it, but I also have the suspicion that this will be one of those books that, when I click on my Round Three link on October 31, 2011, I will say "Oh yeah, I forgot I read that one." I'm sure there are those who violently disagree with me, but that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.