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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Sep 1999, 368 pages
Paperback:
Aug 2000, 368 pages
The story of Frank's American journey from impoverished immigrant to brilliant teacher and raconteur.
Frank McCourt's glorious childhood memoir, Angela's Ashes, has been loved and celebrated by readers everywhere for its spirit, its wit and its profound humanity. A tale of redemption, in which storytelling itself is the source of salvation, it won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Rarely has a book so swiftly found its place on the literary landscape.
And now we have 'Tis, the story of Frank's American journey from impoverished immigrant to brilliant teacher and raconteur. Frank lands in New York at age nineteen, in the company of a priest he meets on the boat. He gets a job at the Biltmore Hotel, where he immediately encounters the vivid hierarchies of this "classless country," and then is drafted into the army and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type reports. It is Frank's incomparable voice -- his uncanny humor and his astonishing ear for dialogue -- that renders these experiences spellbinding.
When Frank returns to America in 1953, he works on the docks, always resisting what everyone tells him, that men and women who have dreamed and toiled for years to get to America should "stick to their own kind" once they arrive. Somehow, Frank knows that he should be getting an education, and though he left school at fourteen, he talks his way into New York University. There, he falls in love with the quintessential Yankee, long-legged and blonde, and tries to live his dream. But it is not until he starts to teach -- and to write -- that Frank finds his place in the world. The same vulnerable but invincible spirit that captured the hearts of readers in Angela's Ashes comes of age.
As Malcolm Jones said in his Newsweek review of Angela's Ashes, "It is only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he leaves them wanting more when he is done...and McCourt proves himself one of the very best." Frank McCourt's 'Tis is one of the most eagerly awaited books of our time, and it is a masterpiece.
Chapter One
When the MS Irish Oak sailed from Cork in October 1949, we expected to
be in New York City in a week. Instead, after two days at sea, we were told we
were going to Montreal in Canada. I told the first officer all I had was forty
dollars and would Irish Shipping pay my train fare from Montreal to New York. He
said, No, the company wasn't responsible. He said freighters are the whores of
the high seas, they'll do anything for anyone. You could say a freighter is like
Murphy's oul' dog, he'll go part of the road with any wanderer.
Two days later Irish Shipping changed its mind and gave us the happy news,
Sail for New York City, but two days after that the captain was told, Sail for
Albany.
The first officer told me Albany was a city far up the Hudson River, capital
of New York State. He said Albany had all the charm of Limerick, ha ha ha, a
great place to die but not a place where you'd want to get married or rear
children. He was from Dublin and knew I was ...
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A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas--a place ...
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