Angela's Ashes is a memoir that reads like a novel. Starting in America at the time of the Great Depression, it follows the life of the author, an Irish lad named Frank McCourt. When the McCourt family can not make ends meet, due to the inability of Frank's father to keep a job and to keep drinks out, they have to move back to Ireland. They have lost two children in the meantime to, well, poverty.
Scorned by Angela's (Frank's mother) family since Malachy (Frank's father) is from Northern Ireland, the family keeps struggling, especially since Malachy frequently spends all the earned wages in pubs and leaves them to starve.
The book covers Frank's life until he turns nineteen and goes back to America. It is a moving narrative but it is so grim that at one point one thinks there may be some exaggeration in it. Although, when considering the conditions in Ireland before and after the 2nd World War, the suffering may have been realistically depicted. The poverty is striking and McCourt has some sharp humour within the narrative, but for some reason I did not enjoy it as much as I should.
There's also a critically acclaimed motion picture based on the memoirs and I2ve seen positive feedback about it.