Frank McCourt, author of ‘Angela’s Ashes has died

The well respected Irish author Frank McCourt has died in New York City, aged 78. He was the author of Angela’s Ashes, a memoir about his traumatic childhood.

“Frank McCourt’s gentle, understated voice throws into relief the admirable humour, spirit and humanity of the people who made the degradation of his childhood bearable.” Gramophone 1/11/97

“It was Frank McCourt’s year and his reading of Angela’s Ashes on audio tape is the best reason I can think of for taking a long car journey.” Irish Times 25/12/97

“Frank McCourt’s reading is captivating from the first moment. Felicitous writing and harsh voicing combine to make an apparently dismal story absolutely hilarious.” Evening Standard 22/12/97

Frank McCourt had spent most of his life working as a school teacher in the US, and enjoyed fame only after retirement with the publication of Angela’s Ashes in 1996.

The book was instantly popular with both critics and readers, winning a Pulitzer Prize and selling millions of copies.

Lecture by Frank McCourt Teacher Man

A film adaptation was released in 1999 starring Robert Carlyle and Emily Watson.

Angela’s Ashes

“Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood,” writes Frank McCourt in Angela’s Ashes. “Worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.” Welcome, then, to the pinnacle of the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. Born in Brooklyn in 1930 to recent Irish immigrants Malachy and Angela McCourt, Frank grew up in Limerick after his parents returned to Ireland because of poor prospects in America. It turns out that prospects weren’t so great back in the old country either–not with Malachy for a father. A chronically unemployed and nearly unemployable alcoholic, he appears to be the model on which many of our more insulting clichés about drunken Irish manhood are based. Mix in abject poverty, and frequent death and illness, and you have all the makings of a truly difficult early life. Fortunately, in McCourt’s able hands it also has all the makings of a compelling memoir.

His other books

Tis
The sequel to Frank McCourt’s memoir of his Irish Catholic boyhood, Angela’s Ashes, picks up the story in October 1949 upon his arrival in America. Though he was born in New York, the family had returned to Ireland due to poor prospects in the United States. Now back on American soil, this awkward 19-year-old, with his “pimply face, sore eyes, and bad teeth,” has little in common with the healthy, self-assured college students he sees on the subway and dreams of joining in the classroom. Initially, his American experience is as harrowing as his impoverished youth in Ireland, including two of the grimmest Christmases ever described in literature. McCourt views the U.S. through the same sharp eye and dark humour that distinguished his first memoir; race prejudice, casual cruelty and dead-end jobs weigh on his spirits as he searches for a way out. A glimpse of hope comes from the army, where he acquires some white-collar skills, and from New York University, which admits him without a high school diploma. But the journey toward his position teaching creative writing at Stuyvesant High School is neither quick nor easy. Fortunately, McCourt’s openness to every variety of human emotion and longing remains exceptional; even the most damaged, difficult people he encounters are richly rendered individuals with whom the reader can’t help but feel uncomfortable kinship. The magical prose, with its singing Irish cadences, brings grandeur and beauty to the most sorrowful events, including the final scene, in which Angela’s ashes are scattered over a Limerick graveyard. –Wendy Smith

Teacher ManMcCourt has a compulsion to tell us the story of his life, but he does it so well — modulating beautifully from ventriloquistically exact repro teen-speak to rhapsodic meditations on his midlife crisis — that one couldn’t possibly want him to stop. I wish I could have been in one of his classes.’ Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Sunday Times ‘This memoir about teaching is unlike any other I have read: relatively mundane events and incidents shine against that backdrop of that pathetic, abused child.’ Francis Gilbert, Sunday Telegraph ‘Damn entertaining!McCourt is a master racouteur.’ Washington Post ‘McCourt’s many fans will of course love this book, but it also should be mandatory reading for every teacher in America. And it wouldn’t hurt some politicians to read it, too.’ Publishers Weekly ‘As good as writing gets about teaching and learning and finding yourself through writing.’ USA Today ‘Heart-warming.’ New York Times ‘McCourt has an undeniable gift for turning a phrase.’ Boston Globe