May 05, 2010 08:02 PM
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There are books which – while you read – cast such a magical spell that you steal time from your daily activities to spend on them - it may be while travelling or working in home or watching TV - ( in my case, I exploited time of IPL matches to finish it off); and when you are not reading them you keep thinking about them, about the characters, about what’s going to happen next, all such kind of curiosities keep hoisting in your mind; and finally when you finish the book you feel sad – not only because the climax is heartbreaking, though that may also be the reason – because now you’ll have to come out of the world of those characters, and it hurts you because not only you were reading it, you were actually living it; and the worst part is, it becomes very hard to choose & pick the next book as your mind still linger in those times and characters and you don’t want to come out of them. These books also put you in dilemma about whether to write review for them or not; because on one hand you heart wants to express all the feelings you had while reading them while on the other, it fears, you might not be able to do full justice to it.
I had these feelings while reading “One Hundred years of Solitude”, “Kane and Abel”, “To kill the mocking Bird”, “The Hobbit” and I have them now for Angela’s Ashes (AA).
AA made me more humble and thankful to God (I hope I already was, a bit, before reading it). And every time I have a reason to – especially while having something to eat - I thank God for every piece of bread going into me, for the cloths I have to wear, for a proper home; for there are countless people like McCourt’s -still in this world and will always be – who struggle for their daily bread and butter and their daily aim is to earn enough so that their children don’t have to sleep empty stomach at the end of the day, saving for the future is something they don’t have time to think of.
AA has the power to make you think differently towards the world; it can make you humble and thankful to God– as I said earlier and as it did to me-, it can make you generous and benevolent, and next time you see some children’s begging or wandering on the streets - in rags and barefoot - you may not be that satirical and unkind to them as they may bring the memory of McCourt’s. How often – while reading AA – I wanted to get into the pages of the book and help them in whichever way I can; and what makes AA even more tragic and inspiring is the fact that it all really happened, that it is a memoir and not some fictional story, though I wished it to be.
No ..no.. don’t think tragedies and Gloom is all you will get out of AA because of the way I put it before in the previous paragraph. Beauty of AA lies in the fact that it’s written with such a witty language that it looks like marriage of sorrow and humor and you’ll feel like you don’t know whether to weep or laugh and sometimes you will find yourself doing both at once. AA has its happy moments, it’s sad moments, but the best ones are those that have both of these feeling amalgamated.
About the Author and Book :
Language is very simple and amusing and it really feels like as if written by Frank in his early days itself - when all these events really happened - and I wonder how he has managed to remember all of these facts so minutely and correctly. AA has life of 360 pages and was first published in 1996.
AA is a very critically acclaimed book and has numerous awards and appericiations to its credit like : National Book Critics Circle Award (Biography) (1996), Pulitzer Prize for Biography (1999)
AA covers Frank’s story till the age of 18 and it was followed by “‘Tis” and “Teacher Man” which covers rest of his life (All 3 of them forms his Autobiography). Having already read “Teacher Man” I know his misery is going follow him in America too. I guess his life took a turn only after the publication of AA.
In my curiosity to find out if there is any fictional book he has written, I browsed the net, and it made me so sad to find out that there is none and there’ll never be, bcoz’ Frank – who now has become one of my favorite writer – died in 2009 due to Cancer.
About the Story:
“People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for 8 hundred years.”
I’m not going to cover it in details (as I usually do) though previous sections and above extract might’ve already given some idea of it. It’s the real story of Frank McCourt’s Family, right from the marriage of Frank’s Parent (Malachy and Angela); birth and life of Frank and Malachy (Frank’s younger Brother)and his twin brothers(Oliver and Eugene) in America; moving back to Ireland after the death of their baby sister Margaret ; and rest all constitute their struggle with poverty and hunger as they are raised in the slums of Limerick. Mother(Angela) has no money to feed children –though she did her best to raise and feed them on dole money and occasional help from Charitable Societies - since father rarely worked and when he did he drank his wages. The loss of children every now than made them somewhat careless and irresponsible and it’s the other children (Frank and Malachy) that has to suffer and pay the price for it. It’s a story where grown-ups are at the mercy of life and children are at the mercy of grown-ups. It’s a story of survival and growth beyond all odds.
Thank God that AA atleast end on the positive note with Frank - filled with his dreams and ambitions - leaving for America, though till half the length of book you wonder if their misery and gloom will ever end.
Some Words from the Book: Hope extracts below gives you some idea about what to find in book
1. “A mother’s love is a blessing, No matter where you roam; Keep her while you have her, you will miss her when she’s gone.
Love her as in childhood, though feeble, old and grey; For you’ll never miss a mother’s love, till she’s buried beneath the clay.”
2. “I can dream about the red-lipped landlord's daughter and the highwayman, and the nurses and nuns can do nothing about it. it's lovely to know that the world can't interfere with the inside of your head.”
3. “Teacher says its a glorious thing to die for the faith and Dad says its glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there's anyone in the world who would like us to live. I'd love to be big and improtant as I grow up but I dont think I'll live that long the way I am expected to die for
this and that.
I want to tell them that I can't die for faith because I am already booked
