SOURCE: "Hard Luck, Good Tales," in Newsweek, September 2, 1996, pp. 68-9.

[In the review below, Jones praises McCourt's memoir but notes that the author's fast-paced narrative belies a desire to rid himself of his memories.]

In its barest outline, Frank McCourt's memoir, Angela's Ashes, looks like an encyclopedia of Irish cliché. His account of an impoverished Irish Catholic childhood gives us the drunken father bawling patriotic songs at all hours of the night, the poor sainted mother weeping by the fire and the wee lads without a crust between 'em. The odd thing is, while you're reading you hardly notice that some of this material has come your way before. Taking up the staples of Irish family sagas, McCourt uses virtuosic black humor and a natural-born storyteller's instincts to induce in his readers a blissful literary amnesia. By the time you're done, you've come to wonder if he didn't...