Angela's Ashes- Frank McCourt

So-- this was a tough read about hardcore poverty, religion and ignorance. By the end of the novel (which is autobiographical) fried bread, mashed bread with sugar and especially a hardboiled egg, sounded like heaven to me! It makes me feel terrible listening to little Frankie and his brothers having the luck of eating bread and jam, stealing an apple hear and there and enjoying the sweet little toffee once in a while when I can have every food item he mentions in a matter of minutes. He makes my childhood poverty look like the life of royalty.

His is a society of simplicity and therefore ridiculous complexity. What I mean by that is every time one hear's about or visits a small "simple" town where everyone "obeys" the church (tis in quotation b/c most never really do obey the church, they just sin in secret) and does so without question but the younger generation is always punished for this simplicity. They grow up in forced ignorance and like Frankie, get in big trouble just trying to understand things about the world they were never taught (like sex, which I think is implied).

McCourt's writing style does a GREAT job reflecting that forced ignorance. The lack of comas throughout the text were at first annoying to me but then I realized that it forced me to read without breaking/pausing, much the way a child talks. This was important to create a relationship between the author and the reader.

And what of the title?? While I was reading I anticipated the death of Frankie's mam, Angela. I dreaded it because I thought I knew it was coming and I hated to think about what would happen to the children (those that had survived the sickness and the hunger). I thought her death would force her husband from the North to sober up or force the children into the orphanage. But she did not die. Atleast not physically. I wonder if her 'ashes' symbolize the deathes of three of her children, her husbands problem with the drink and later Angela's decision to stop having sex with her husband to avoid another pregnancy. Perhaps it is her soul that did not survive the life Frankie writes about.