Book Reviews

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Author rises from the “Ashes”

By Jennifer Abrams

Frank McCourt's touching memoir of his poverty-stricken Irish Catholic childhood, Angela's Ashes, won a Pulitzer Prize and other awards. Angela's Ashes is even being made into a movie that will be available around the holiday season.

Now McCourt brings us 'Tis, the powerful sequel to Angela's Ashes. 'Tis begins just where Angela's Ashes ended. McCourt is the protagonist and narrator of the story, starting in October 1949, upon his arrival to New York.

We find McCourt struggling to hold down various jobs and having a hard time as a 19-year-old Irish immigrant with a "pimply face, sore eyes, and bad teeth." He yearns to be one of the all-American confident college students that he sees on the subways.

McCourt's first few years in America are grim. He views America with the same observant eye and dark humor that made Angela's Ashes so successful. Racial prejudice, dead-end jobs, and heavy drinking burden him. Although he relates closely with other immigrants, his fascination with the "American Dream" is apparent throughout the book.

McCourt finally gets a way out when he learns some clerical skills in the Army. He is then conditionally admitted to New York University (although he has no high school diploma), and decides to become a teacher. It is through teaching that McCourt truly finds his place in the world.

His teaching years are humorously and beautifully retold, as he grows and sees faults in his own character. He sometimes interrupts his narrative chronology to give funny in-depth views of characters he's met along the way.

McCourt isn't afraid to give frank accounts of his family members, and his marriage.

His mother, Angela, is unappeasable and suffering up to the day she dies. His father, a constant drunk, never changes. McCourt's brothers are characterized as carefree, whereas it is apparent that McCourt feels he does everything the hard way-he only way he knows and respects.

He marries a beautiful New Englander but the relationship will become "a sustained squabble." He glosses over the divorce, making it the only part of the book where you wonder what actually happened. There is one child from the marriage, and we watch as McCourt struggles to be the father his father wasn't.

Although the story is involving and endearing, it is McCourt's ability to tell the story with a unique perspective, with a vulnerable and unbeatable spirit, that make 'Tis a great book. 'Tis is a moving memoir, as was Angela's Ashes, and leaves the reader waiting for the next installment of Frank McCourt's life.

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