한 권의 책을 내기 위해 예순여섯 해를 기다린 한 남자가 있었다. 영어선생님으로 27년을 살았던 그는 소설가가 되기를 꿈꾸었지만, 결국 펴낸 것은 아일랜드에서의 지난한 유년기를 풀어낸 회고록이었다. 이 한 권의 책이 미국에 던진 반향은 엄청났다. 책에 등장한 아일랜드식 농담이 유행했으며, 책의 배경이 된 아일랜드 리머릭에는 책의 이름을 딴 관광 코스가 생겨났다.
<안젤라의 재>는 아일랜드계 미국인 교육자이자 에세이스트인 프랭크 매코트가 나이 예순여섯 살에 펴낸 첫 번째 책으로, 퓰리처 상, 전미 도서 비평가상 등을 휩쓸었다. 프랭크 매코트는 영국의 식민지에서 독립한 지 얼마 되지 않은 아일랜드 리머릭에서 궁핍한 시절을 보냈다. 이 시절의 경험을 아일랜드인 특유의 유머와 가슴 찡한 정서로 녹여냈다.
"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 does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story.
Perhaps it is a story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing shoes repaired with tires, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner, and searching the pubs for his father, 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.
Imbued with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion -- and movingly read in his own voice -- Angela's Ashes is a glorious audiobook that bears all the marks of a classic.
"Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood," writes Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes. "Worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."
Imbued with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, Angela's Ashes is a glorious Pulitzer Prize-winner that bears all the marks of a classic.
"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 does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story.
Perhaps it is a story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing shoes repaired with tires, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner, and searching the pubs for his father, 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.
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