a memoir

Angela's Ashes (bookcover)

i met "Angela's Ashes" when i was in college, on my graduating year. it was just sitting there on the corner table at my dear friend Arvy's living room, gathering dust and old days. bookworm as i am, i found myself dusting it off by my hands. it was pure curiosity that i decided to borrow the book. i was almost nonchalant when i got home and took it out from my bag. as i would usually have loads of other unread books on my room, i just stuffed it aside, waiting for its turn along with sidney sheldon books and john grisham's.

but even if i have other books waiting, "Angela's Ashes" is pulling me closer to read it "on priority". so i started reading it one boring afternoon and i was hooked!

i really don't want to make a book review here because there was too much in the author's childhood experiences in Limerick (Ireland). it was both inspiring and absorbing. there were some parts that are funny but ironically miserable. there was too much innocence in Frank's child-like way of narrating his story. you can read the Chapter IV excerpt here.

Angela's Ashes was written by Frank McCourt in 1996. among other awards and good reviews it received, it's got a Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography/Biography in 1997. no doubt that it is a must-read. this book is just the first among the trilogy of his memoir.

"My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married
and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four, my
brother, Malachy, three, the twins, Oliver and Eugene, barely one, and my
sister, Margaret, dead and gone. When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I
survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood
is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the
miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic
childhood." -Frank McCourt (Angela's Ashes)

Note: Frank McCourt is coming in Dubai on Friday, 27 February 2009 to take part in the first Emirates Airlines International Festival of Literature. Tickets here.

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i definitely want to go but i'm definitely sure that hubby is not into this kind of thing. it bores him to death!