'TIS

The sequel to Frank McCourt's memoir of his Irish Catholic boyhood, 'Angela's Ashes', picks up the story in October 1949, upon his arrival in America. Initially, his American experience is as harrowing as his impoverished youth in Ireland. McCourt views the U.S. through the same sharp eye and with the same dark humor that distinguished his first memoir: race prejudice, casual cruelty, and dead-end jobs weigh on his spirits as he searches for a way out. But there comes a glimpse of hope from the army and from New York University. Nonetheless the journey toward his position teaching creative writing is neither quick nor easy. Fortunately, McCourt's openness to every variety of human emotion and longing remains exceptional. The magical prose, with its singing Irish cadences, brings grandeur and beauty to the most sorrowful events.