| In September, 1996, a retired schoolteacher named Frank McCourt published his first book, a memoir called “Angela’s Ashes” that the Times immediately hailed as a classic. A grim but wry account of McCourt’s childhood in Ireland, the book became a juggernaut best-seller, and won a Pulitzer Prize the following year. Three months before the memoir’s release, The New Yorker published an excerpt, which opens shortly after the McCourt family returned to Ireland from Brooklyn, where he was born. In his mother’s home town, Limerick, McCourt’s father struggles to find work, often spending anything he earns on alcohol. McCourt’s mother, Angela, hustles to keep the family housed and fed, relying on help from her disapproving mother, and on charity from the Church. McCourt evokes the myriad miseries of the period—the hunger and poverty, corporal punishment, and surly priests—but also laces the story with humor and warmth. At one point, a neighbor visits Angela when money is sparse, and the two women share a smoke: Bridie drags on her Woodbine, drinks her tea, and declares that God is good. Mam says she’s sure God is good for someone somewhere but He hasn’t been seen lately in the lanes of Limerick. Bridie laughs. Oh, Angela, you could go to Hell for that, and Mam says, Aren’t I there already, Bridie? And they laugh and drink their tea and smoke their Woodbines and tell one another the fag is the only comfort they have. Decades later, McCourt gracefully distills that moment of bittersweet commiseration. The women’s sense of solace becomes his, and ours. | 
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