McCourts Pulitzer Prize winning look back at his childhood. It was of course a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while... Angelas Ashes is Frank McCourts sad funny bittersweet memoir of growing up in New York in the 30s and in Ireland in the 40s. It is a story of extreme hardship and suffering in Brooklyn tenements and Limerick slums -- too many children too little money his mother Angela barely coping as his father Malachys drinking bouts constantly brought the family to the brink of disaster. It is a story of courage and survival against apparently overwhelming odds. Written with the vitality and resonance of a work of fiction and a remarkable absence of sentimentality Angelas Ashes is imbued on every page with Frank McCourts distinctive humour and compassion. Out of terrible circumstances he has created a glorious book in the tradition of Irelands literary masters which bears all the marks of a great classic.