Resumo de Angela's Ashes

The book begins with Frank?s Irish parents meeting in New York City in the late 1920s. Since the pregnancy happened out of wedlock they were quickly married yet were still considered a disgrace to the family. The father was a drunk and when the depression came Frank?s aunt collected money to send the family of five back to Ireland.
The family ends up in Limerick in a run down building next to the only out house for all the neighbours. This two floor tenement floods the main floor in the spring, is stifling hot and smelly in the summer, freezing cold in the winter and just smelly in the fall.
Depression times are hard and the government pays by the number of children in the family. Frank?s sister dies then the twins but one more brother is born. What ever money the family gets dad drinks away and they are constantly on the verge of starvation. During the Second World War dad goes to work in England and drinks his pay checks away leaving the family nothing.
Also during the depression Frank has his first communion and confirmation. Instead of getting gifts he becomes seriously ill. On both occasions he ends up in the hospital for which his parents are upset as he did not get food or money the family could use.
During the war with dad not around three boys learn how to steal food from upscale neighbourhoods. They scrounge along the railway tracks for coal and even chop up the house for firewood. This gets the family evicted and they go to live with a cousin whose mother has died. The boys sleep down stairs while their mom on a regular basis climbs up into the loft to calm down the angry cousin and then sleeps with him.
Frank gets a job as a telegram delivery boy at 14 and has his first sexual encounter with a teenage girl. He earns extra money by writing enforcer style letters on behalf of an elderly woman who loans money to others. Both the teenage girl and old woman die. Frank?s upset about the girl and steals the money the old woman was hiding.
At 16 instead of writing the Post Office exam he goes to work delivering newspapers. He uses the money from this job and his money account at the post office to earn enough for passage back to New York City.
His last act before leaving Ireland is to steal some more money and hop on the boat to America. While still on the boat in New York harbour a group of people come aboard and he has a sexual experience with a prostitute.
This is where the story ends. Where the title came from is never mentioned. The book is one continuous series of paragraphs with no grammatical changes for anyone speaking. It is a good autobiography of a boy growing up in depression times in Ireland and gave a view of what it was like to live on the wrong side of the tracks yet overall not impressive.
For a person taught high school English in New York City Frank McCourt seems to know much about writing. Maybe that is why it was put on the New York Times best sellers list. There again because he and his brother preformed parts of the book on stage before the book was published created a market for the book when it was released. Write your abstract here.

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