Childhood Nightmares (Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt
Date:	29/07/03 (440 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: sense of place and time, an education

Disadvantages: deeply distressing

That a man alive in our own time could have such a tale to tell of poverty and deprivation is bad enough, that he was living in Europe is worse in many ways, because its so easy to develop the happy illusion that we're somehow more civillized - well, if this book is anything to go by, we aren't.

Frank McCourt was born in America during the depression, the eldest child of 7, three of whom did not survive. He tells us he was the product of a one night stand, his parent's marriage the unlooked for consequence of that passing encounter. It's not exactly a loveless marriage or home, but it isn't one built on the firmest of foundations. McCourt's memoires follow his family's return to Ireland, their desperate search for somewhere to live, their extreme poverty and the harsh environment they live in. The prejudice displayed in this book is incredible - McCourt senior hails from the North of Ireland, and no one in the South takes kindly to him -admittedly not helped by his being an irrensponsible drunkard who would rather drink away his wages or, more often his dole, than put food on the table for his family. The fear and prejudice dividing people is really surprising at times.

As a description of life on abject poverty, this is a startling read - the cold cramped conditions, the fleas, the hunger, the begging and the broken pride - all of it grim. However, there are some much needed moments of light and humour, some flashes of hope and kindness that make the rest a bit more bearable both for Frank and his readers.

There were several things about this book that will stay with me, the first is what it has to say about Catholicism - the priests living in luxury while poor people on the streets are starving and children are actually dying for want of food and decent shelter. The humiliating way in which the poor are treated if they seek for aid. The mention of priests talking about people giving things up for lent when the
y have almost nothing as it is, the attitudes to sex and contraception that mean more children are born than can be fed. I don't think you can read this book and not see the Catholic church as agrivating the conditions in which people lived, burdening them with guilt, with expenses and with a fear of hell.

The second thing is one that impressed me, and that's the way in which the book is written. McCourt has crammed an amazing number of voices into the book. His writting throughout is sugegstive of a child's persepctive - it is not an adult looking back, it is a child telling us how it is. He conveys both what the child sees, and what is actually going on, which is impressive given that he only has one narratorial voice. He captures the voices he heard as a child, the accents and rhythms of language, and this is very effective indeed. There's an incredible amount of pathos in the writing, much of it stemming from a child's lack of understanding. There are things an adult reader will udnerstand that the child narrator does not. There is also a certain degree of alienation from the older characters which saves him from having to really engage with the father who drank away the money and left them in misery, or the mother who seems to have spent more time mourning over her dead children than caring for he ones still living.

It isn't an easy read this, it had me in tears a couple of times (dead children are always going to be an emotive subject). It also made me very angry, and did bring out the femenist in me, because the system really has no room in it for abandonned women with children - no way to get money, little scope for work etc.

I think it's a good read on the whole, if a challenging one at times. if you like the 'we were poor but happy' kind of tales, usually the autobiographies of those who grew up somewhere rural but impoverished, then this tale is going to be a bit of a system shock.

Summary: