First published 1998
Frank McCourt grows up hungry in the slums of Limerick, Ireland, where his mother Angela struggles to feed her children. His father Malachy drinks away whatever wages he earns from his sporadic work, leaving the family to beg for food and gather coal from roadsides. Frank wears rags for diapers and dreams of a pig's head for Christmas dinner. The boy endures not just poverty and near-starvation, but the cruelty of relatives and neighbors who offer little sympathy for his family's plight. Yet Malachy, for all his failings as a provider, fills Frank's imagination with stories of Irish heroes like Cuchulain and fantastical tales of the Angel on the Seventh Step who delivers babies to mothers. These stories become Frank's lifeline, feeding his spirit when his body goes without food. Through his father's gift for storytelling, Frank develops his own voice and the resilience to survive his miserable Irish Catholic childhood with humor and compassion intact.
Genres: family-life, abuse, 20th-century, coming-of-age, autobiography, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, resilience
Setting: Limerick, Ireland
Period: 20th Century
368 pages · Unknown Binding · Scribner
Content warnings: child-abuse, substance-abuse