SOURCE: "Some Day I'll Be In Out of the Rain," in The New York Times Book Review, September 15, 1996, p. 13.

[In the following review, Donoghue summarizes Angela's Ashes and reflects on the Irish childhood experiences he shares in common with McCourt.]

All happy childhoods are the same; every unhappy childhood is unhappy in its own way. In Angela's Ashes Frank McCourt maintains that "worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." My own childhood was Irish and Catholic, a combination I didn't find especially disagreeable; but then I had certain advantages. I lived in Warrenpoint, then as now a far more salubrious place than Mr. McCourt's Limerick. I had the advantage of steady parents. My father was a sober man, hard working, domestically reliable, cautious about money, an ungregarious character, a minder of his own business. My...