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Title: 'Tis: A Memoir
ISBN: 0684865742
Author:
Frank McCourt
Publicate Date: 2000-08-28
Publish: 2000-08-28
List Price: $14.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $0.59
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.01
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.17
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| Customer Review: |
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1: 'Tis worth reading
This book isn't Angela's Ashes, nor should it be, but I'm disappointed that it couldn't maintain the momentum in Angela's Ashes. This book picks up where Angela left off and appropriately ends with Angela's death. The beginning of this book is filled with humor and fun scenes depicting McCourt's early days in America. Unfortunately, I found myself boring of the book about the time McCourt entered the army. Still had its humorous moments, but definitely lagging. By the time Mike became Alberta, I was counting pages to the end. This book lacked the optimism I found so endearing in Angela's Ashes, but it did give closure at the end. Taking Angela's ashes back to Ireland seemed a fitting ending to the tome. The book only vaguely glosses over what's going on with Malachy, Michael and Alphie, focuses on the hardships that are mostly McCourt's own fault. But overall, I still think the book was worth reading.
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2: Better than Angela's Ashes, but still could have been more
In `Tis we get some anecdotes about his life as a teacher & the attitudes of public school officials, students, & parents that potentially could have been good reading, but FM- oddly- seems to lapse into a bit of romanticism about those times. I went to public school in New York only a decade or so after many of the tales spun by FM so I know that much of what he relates is very buffed up. Again, why? If AA's success was so based on the misery factor it would seem that dealing with some of the worst the NYC public school system could dredge up would leave him rife with possibilities. Yet, again, he refrains. In AA FM seemed to indulge in both inner & outer misery, yet in `Tis he goes full bore only on the inner wrecks- the outer world is a hazy place that seems to frighten him, & rob him of some of the potentially better tales of his life.
Despite the relative ease of his life, compared to AA, FM seems to spend an inordinate amount of time just whining with no cause. This would not be a problem if FM used this quality for a higher purpose in a bildungsroman- but `Tis is not such a beast. It's almost as if FM wrote the book from a far place hermetically sealed off from himself, with emotions later dubbed in, but a bit off (like a Godzilla film) because he has not properly reflected long nor hard enough on his life. It's as if he's trying to convince himself of the myth of `Frank McCourt'. Having recently read The Great Gatsby for the 1st time I was struck by how similar a voice FM has in `Tis, towards his past self, is with the voice of that novel's narrator- Nick Carraway- towards the titular character. Whereas this technique works well in TGG because it allows a reader an almost scientific detachment from the events, in `Tis FM does not allow this for he deliberately hazes events & characters. Part of this is due to the book probably being too compressed & rushed in to print to coincide with the release of the film Angela's Ashes, but most of it is due to FM's understanding of human nature (& himself) not measuring up to his lyrical ability with words.
This is the basic difference between the 2 books- AA is too bloated & `Tis too compressed, AA has lesser tales, but FM explicates them better. In short, AA has some literature-worthy events that are given short-shrift, but `Tis is a series of vignettes about a very average life that's made a bit better in the telling. AA has been way overpraised, & many are already readying its spot in the literary canon, but `Tis, despite many manifest flaws, is a better book- albeit only slightly.
Yet, I cannot help but wonder what might have been done with these tales had FM 1st cut his teeth on a few novels, then mastered prose well enough to really hit a couple of home runs. Oh well- here's what we're left with: on a scale of 1-100 Angela's Ashes rates about a 75-80 while `Tis is in the 80-85 range. Somewhere, though, the bell rings in at 100, & Angela McCourt takes her place in literature- it's just not in this life, either.
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3: Bad Service
After numerous attempts to contactthe seller, Istill have not received the book. Connie spahr 10/13/2008
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4: Disappointing follow-up to Angela's Ashes
I loved Angela's Ashes and was thrilled to learn there was a sequel. I was very disappointed in Tis, however. McCourt's writing style was charming in Angela's Ashes since he was writing from the perspective of a child but didn't translate well once he was recalling his adulthood. The book is way too long and there are many random, uninteresting anecdotes. I won't be reading McCourt's 3rd book.
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5: Darker than the first
Frank McCourt once again takes us on a tour of his life, this time from the age of nineteen to his fifties. As with Angela's Ashes, his storytelling is quintessentially Irish, and the reader can almost hear his brogue as he tells his tale. Again, this book is full of Irish humor and sensibility, but is much darker than its prequel, Angela's Ashes. I fully expected to love this book as much as Angela's Ashes, but I had a difficult time coming to terms with the way Frank McCourt presents himself as well as his mother this time around.
Certainly, Mr. McCourt is not in this world to live up to my expectations, but I was so disappointed to learn that he had let alcohol grab hold of him even after describing how his drunken father had made his childhood and his mother's life such a misery. There's no real explanation of how he became an author - his writing is treated as an aside to everything else going on in his life, is seldom mentioned and is never discussed in detail. On the other hand, his teaching career is discussed vividly, but is a sad treatise on American education and I came away feeling as though it was a job he despised.
At long last, there is a reference to the title of his childhood memoir, something that I expected in that book but never materialized. The titles of the two books might have been better off swapped.
C.A.Wulff - author of Born Without a Tail www.yelodoggie.com
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