Angela's Ashes

[Land Waster]

Or the miserable Irish Catholic consumptive childhood, to give it a subtitle.

I finished it a few weeks ago, and here are three things that I learned:

1) A mother's spit is just as good as Brylcream

2) Never waste food. Especially when it comes to licking the grease of the newspaper that your fish and chips came in.

3) They don't like them Presbyterians up north down in Limerick.

Of course some natives of Limerick - including Richard Harris - have accused Frankie McCourt of exaggerating the poverty of 1930s Limerick for literary effect.

But it has to be admitted that the West of Ireland is damp with a capital D.

Anyone else read it or have a view on this?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Angela's Ashes

my dad brought me around the last of the lanes in limerick in the 1980's. Even as a small child I couldn't believe that people had lived in them. My father will testify that limerick was every bit as poor as McCourt claimed.

[MsD]

Angela's Ashes

Yeh, I think McCourt's own brother Malachy said that he'd overegged the pudding a bit, but my mum (raised poor in the Limerick countryside in the 1930s) loved the book and thought it fairly spot-on.

I liked it but found it depressing.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Angela's Ashes

Richard Harris went to crescent college, I suspect that the amount of time he spent down lanes was pretty minimal.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Angela's Ashes

I found the movie fairly depressing and was informed the book was worse; so I never bothered reading it.

[Toro Toro]

Angela's Ashes

When Malachy fucking McCourt accuses you of over-egging a pudding, you've basically got a large omelette on your hands.

Very possibly the worst prose-stylist who ever lived.

[Land Waster]

Angela's Ashes

Yeh, Angela's Ashes is never going to win any light entertainment awards.

It's difficult to convey to others how dampness has formed the backdrop to everyday life in the West of Ireland. Even now, when you visit shops, restaurants bars and houses that are over say, 20 years old, the first thing that hits you when you walk in is the faint smell of mould.

There's more than a grain of truth in Frank McCourt's observation that so many people went to Mass in Limerick to escape the rain. And that if Christ was walking the streets of 'the holiest city in Ireland' he would be dead of the consumption.