Angela's Ashes
Between the craziness of Thanksgiving, physical therapy, and the
impending holiday season, it took me nearly a month to read this book,
which it really shouldn't have. But when I'm not commuting by train, I
have a hard time finding time to just sit and read. Especially with
everything else going on. Because of that I ended up reading Angela's Ashes in fits and starts and never really got as absorbed into it as I might have otherwise.
Back when I started it, I noted that for a tragedy, the book has a lot of humor in it. Not necessarily laugh out loud humor, but the sort of wry humor that seems to me to be typical of Irish literature. It's an attitude that acknowledges that life is shitty so you have to find your silver linings where you can.
For example, this book is full of the death of children. They drop like flies, and Frank himself loses 3 siblings to various sicknesses. One of his classmates loses nearly all of his siblings, but he's okay with it because each funeral is marked by a party and a week off from school. When his sister gets sick in the summertime, he asks Frank to pray for her to stay alive until school starts and he'll let him come to the wake. Frank prays, and the sister dies in the first week of school. But his friend goes back on his word. So Frank goes back to church to pray that the rest of the siblings die during the summer and the next summer his friend dies. So that's alright.
It's this black humor that makes this book so special, if somewhat uncomfortable. Though towards the end the hope of the family starts to get a little frustrating. When WWII starts, Frank's dad goes to England to get a job and send money home. He has, up to this point, failed to ever hold a job for more than three weeks. Every time he does get some income, he drinks it all away before his wife or kids can get their hands on any of it. Yet when he moves to England, they're all convinced that he'll start sending home money and they'll soon be rich. Reading about the wait for the telegram and Frank's mom's surety that it would come was almost physically painful.
Whether it was the nature of the book or the way I read it, I never felt like I really connected with any of these characters. Even knowing that Angela's Ashes is a memoir rather than a work of fiction failed to really bring any of this home. I should probably find some time a few years from now to actually sit down and give this book the attention is deserves, instead of reading a page here or two there whenever I can find the time.
Back when I started it, I noted that for a tragedy, the book has a lot of humor in it. Not necessarily laugh out loud humor, but the sort of wry humor that seems to me to be typical of Irish literature. It's an attitude that acknowledges that life is shitty so you have to find your silver linings where you can.
For example, this book is full of the death of children. They drop like flies, and Frank himself loses 3 siblings to various sicknesses. One of his classmates loses nearly all of his siblings, but he's okay with it because each funeral is marked by a party and a week off from school. When his sister gets sick in the summertime, he asks Frank to pray for her to stay alive until school starts and he'll let him come to the wake. Frank prays, and the sister dies in the first week of school. But his friend goes back on his word. So Frank goes back to church to pray that the rest of the siblings die during the summer and the next summer his friend dies. So that's alright.
It's this black humor that makes this book so special, if somewhat uncomfortable. Though towards the end the hope of the family starts to get a little frustrating. When WWII starts, Frank's dad goes to England to get a job and send money home. He has, up to this point, failed to ever hold a job for more than three weeks. Every time he does get some income, he drinks it all away before his wife or kids can get their hands on any of it. Yet when he moves to England, they're all convinced that he'll start sending home money and they'll soon be rich. Reading about the wait for the telegram and Frank's mom's surety that it would come was almost physically painful.
Whether it was the nature of the book or the way I read it, I never felt like I really connected with any of these characters. Even knowing that Angela's Ashes is a memoir rather than a work of fiction failed to really bring any of this home. I should probably find some time a few years from now to actually sit down and give this book the attention is deserves, instead of reading a page here or two there whenever I can find the time.
Comments
Post a Comment