Frank McCourt's memoir of his childhood in Ireland exposes a poor Catholic family's continual struggle against severe poverty, almost starvation. To complicate things, the children cannot help but naturally love their crying mother and unemployed alcoholic father. McCourt objectively recreates a turbulent, bleak story, softened only by such love, humor, and perseverance.

Frank, the oldest child in the family, begins his narrative as a three-year old, when they were still living in America. The parents, Angela and Malachy, are persuaded by friends to go back to Angela's home in Limerick, Ireland, where her mother and other relations can help them get a better start. But there are fewer jobs in Ireland than in America, and even when Malachy does find work, he drinks his wages away long before remembering his hungry family at home.

The mother and five children have to depend on St. Vincent de Paul's and the Labor Exchange (dole) to survive. They live on one of the poorest lanes in Limerick, where the smell of neighbors' chamber pots being emptied in the single outhouse next to them, is overwhelming. The only heat in their upstairs rooms (the downstairs room is usually flooded) comes from the coal the two oldest boys can find near the coal yard or along the street. And most times their meals consist of only bread and tea.

So lack of these necessities could have contributed to the deaths of the three youngest children during the family's first years in Ireland. It might also explain the continual trips to doctors and the hospital which the rest of them experienced.

But much of the blame for this destitution can be placed on the father, who loves his family when he is home, but seldom eats there and is always eager to take long walks by himself. So the question that continually plagues young Frank and the family, as well as the readers, is whether the father will ever get a job, and if he does, will he bring his wages home. Later, after joining the army in England during WW II, Malachy is rarely mentioned in the book.

Frank begins working when he becomes fourteen and even his mother has a part-time job then. With their wages now, there is always food on the table, and Frank even saves enough that he can finally return to America.

The dialogue which McCourt gives his characters is excellent and typically Irish. Even the discriminatory attitudes between Protestants and Catholics are evident, plus the general hatred the Irish still feel towards England.

ANGELA'S ASHES deserved to win the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Even more. But the book's title is confusing. If it's referring to the mother's death, that is never mentioned in the book. If it figuratively alludes to her children, or what she went through as a mother, then it's rather vague.