The recap
Frank McCourt was born in Brooklyn, but when he was still a small boy his struggling parents carried the family back across the Atlantic to the damp lanes of Limerick. What follows is a childhood of fleas, rain, hunger and charity queues, shaped by a mother, Angela, who fights to keep her children fed, and a charming, storytelling father whose wages too often disappear into the pub. McCourt tells it all in the voice of the boy he was, in loose, breathless sentences that capture a child's logic and wonder, and he finds astonishing comedy in the bleakest corners: First Communion mishaps, sharp-tongued relatives, stern priests and schoolmasters. The book is heartbreaking and very funny at once, and it never begs for pity. Written by a retired teacher in his sixties, it became one of the most beloved memoirs of the 1990s and remains a masterclass in turning hardship into storytelling.
Why read it
For anyone who loves a great storyteller's voice and can laugh and cry on the same page. It is essential reading for fans of memoir and of Ireland.
Fun facts
- 01
It won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award.
- 02
McCourt was 66 and retired when it was published, after many years teaching writing at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan.
- 03
It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 100 weeks.
- 04
McCourt continued his story in 'Tis (1999) and Teacher Man (2005).
- 05
Alan Parker directed the 1999 film adaptation, starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle.
“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all.”
