Two more children (Oliver and Eugene) die, and Malachy struggles to maintain steady work, partly because he is from Northern Ireland, which the people of Limerick view with suspicion, and partly because of his ongoing drinking. Once there, the family struggles to find a place to live, finally settling in Limerick, where Angela’s mother also lives. Angela’s family is concerned, and her mother (“Grandma”) pays for the family to return to Ireland. The couple have several more children in the years that follow, but the death of their infant daughter Margaret worsens Malachy’s alcoholism and sets the family on a downward spiral. Frank’s parents, Angela Sheehan and Malachy McCourt, meet in New York City and quickly marry after discovering Angela is pregnant with Frank.

Once Frank situates the reader with context and backstory, the narrative generally unfolds in a chronological fashion. The narrative begins asynchronously, with Frank immediately rewinding to a time before he was born and then to a time before his mother, Angela, was born. The edition used for this guide is the Kindle edition, originally published by Scrivener in 1996. It also caused controversy, as some of the people in the book, most notably Angela herself, disputed its veracity, claiming that McCourt fabricated and embellished the circumstances of his childhood.

Upon publication, the book received generally positive acclaim and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for autobiography. The memoir contains occasional vulgarity and some scenes of a graphic sexual nature. There are also many references to historical events in Ireland, such as the English conquest and the Potato Famine. The memoir employs intertextuality and references stories from Irish folklore, traditional Irish ballads, English poetry, and popular Irish films and actors.

Memoirs of a geisha kindle