Tag: Nonfiction

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

~ Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader ~ 25 Comments
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Publisher: Scribner
Publication Date: September 1996
Categories: Ethnic Cultures, Memoir, Historical
Source: My own copy
Description: 

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”

So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank’s mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank’s father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible, and beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father’s tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank’s survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig’s head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance, and remarkable forgiveness.

Angela’s Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt’s astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

My Thoughts:

Why haven’t I read this before now? I’ll let you in on a little secret about me. I avoid the hype. When the world raves about something I stay away from it. Not all the time, but most of the time. So, when this book first came out I probably put on my snooty little hat and decided not to read it until the crazy died down.

Pulitzer Prize? Hmph!

Why do I do that? Am I snobby? Do I think I’m too cool to like something that other people like? I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m pissed off at myself for not reading Angela’s Ashes sooner.


What a stunning, heartbreaking piece of work it is. Oh my word. The writing is acute, vivid and just so GOOD. There were times that I laughed and laughed at some phrase by McCourt. Then there were times that I wanted to cry and cry because people kept dying. 

Omg. Please stop the sad.


What else can I say about this book that hasn’t been said a million times before? It’s glorious. It’s genius. Angela’s Ashes deserved the hype. If you haven’t read it yet please do so. You won’t regret it.



Saturday Night Widows by Becky Aikman

~ Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader ~ 24 Comments
Saturday Night Widows by Becky Aikman
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Publication Date: January, 2013
Categories: Personal Memoir, Death & Dying, Women
Source: Random House

Description:

In her forties – a widow, too young, too modern to accept the role – Becky Aikman struggled to make sense of her place in an altered world.  In this transcendent and infectiously wise memoir, she explores surprising new discoveries about how people experience grief and transcend loss and, following her own remarriage, forms a group with five other young widows to test these unconventional ideas.  Together, these friends summon the humor, resilience, and striving spirit essential for anyone overcoming adversity.

Meet the Saturday Night Widows: ringleader Becky, an unsentimental journalist who lost her husband to cancer; Tara, a polished mother of two, whose husband died in the throes of alcoholism after she filed for divorce; Denise, a widow of just five months, now struggling to get by; Marcia, a hard-driving corporate lawyer; Dawn, an alluring self-made entrepreneur whose husband was killed in a sporting accident, leaving two small children behind; and Lesley, a housewife who returned home one day to find that her husband had committed suicide.

The women meet once a month, and over the course of a year, they strike out on ever more far-flung adventures, learning to live past the worst thing they thought could happen.  They share emotional peaks and valleys – dating, parenting, moving, finding meaningful work, and reinventing themselves – while turning traditional thinking about loss and recovery upside down.  Through it all runs the story of Aikman’s own journey through grief and her love affair with a man who tempts her to marry again.  In a transporting story of what friends can achieve when they hold each other up, Saturday Night Widows is a rare book that will make you laugh, think, and remind yourself that despite the utter unpredictability and occasional tragedy of life, it is also precious, fragile, and often more joyous than we recognize.

My Thoughts:

Although being a widow is something you can’t understand unless you are one, Saturday Night Widows gives us a glimpse of what it means to lose your spouse. You would assume that this would be a devastatingly sad read. While there are sections that will break your heart the overall message is a positive one.

I loved these women. I was rooting for them throughout their journeys. They face financial issues, heartache and archaic ideas about how a widow should act. They do so with such grace and fortitude that you’ll applaud them.

There’s a bit of a You Go Girl! vibe to this book but it’s not corny. I promise. It’s a lovely read about how friendship can pull you through the very worst of times.