Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

First, let me say that I absolutely adored this book. While not as dear to my heart as the first, I think this story is moving and the voice is, as always, unique. That said, this story is a much more familiar one than the last: Irish immigrant trying to make a life for himself in a new world, and a war-enraged America. This story, though, is much more tangible than "other" immigration stories and unique in that, throughout all the troubles, heartache, injustice, and anger, this is a story not burdened with self-pity. That's magic.

This is the continued story of Frank McCourt (see Angela's Ashes) and we pick up upon his arrival in America. His eyes are still troublesome, a testament to the poverty that has followed him across the ocean. The cold-water flat he rents is both freezing and tiny, he finds. He must stick close to other Catholics (initially), and the land of opportunity, it seems, offers little opportunity to the likes of him.

Where the first book seemed startling and heartbreaking in its sudden contrast to American life, this book invokes the same feelings but with an added twinge of guilt for the fact these were our ancestors mistreating and being mistreated. These lives were real--not a distant story, but a tangible one. McCourt's voice too is nothing short of poetry throughout:

"We said a Hail Mary and it wasn't enough. We had drifted from the church but we knew that for her and for us in that ancient abbey there would have been comfort in dignity in the prayers of a priest, proper requiem for a mother of seven.

'We had lunch at a pub along the road to Ballinacura and you'd never know from the way we ate and drank and laughed that we'd scattered our mother who was once a grand dancer at the Wembley Hall and known to one and all for the way she sang a good song, oh, if she could only catch her breath."