There is almost too much for the average reader to take. Of course, Frank McCourt's memoir of early life in Brooklyn and Limerick, of the poverty, squalor, death, drunkenness and shame his family experienced, is all too true. It is this knowledge that makes reading about his burdens particularly hard and his ultimate success seem miraculous. With the popularity of Angela's Ashes, the release of the film and the launch of the sequel 'Tis , we can be sure that monetarily at least the story has a happy ending. Poverty is more than a theme in Angela's Ashes.
Poverty is the background, the foreground and the middle stage from which other themes emerge.
McCourt may not dramatise but he runs the risk of over-emphasising poverty so that it becomes a kind of sideshow fascination. The family is the one constant in a shifting, unforgiving world. Who Loved Children showcases a wild and hungry family throng struggling to keep their heads above water. McCourt's relatives read like fictitious characters themselves - the bossy grandmother, the frustrated aunt, the loopy uncle and Pa Keating as laconic as Uncle Harry from The Sullivans. Role models they aren't, although McCourt manages to draw some good from those around him, even the father who drinks their lives away.