BACKGROUND INFO

Author: Frank McCourt

Year Published: 1996

Type: Nonfiction

Genre: Memoir. A memoir is a narrative in which the author, narrator, and main character are the same person looking back on an experience or a particular time of life. Successful memoirs, however, do more than tell an individual's story; they offer insight into overarching themes; discuss human frailties with candor and often, but not always, empathy; or celebrate the human spirit, often despite hardship.

Perspective and Narrator: Frank McCourt is the author, first-person narrator, and main character of Angela's Ashes.

Tense: Angela's Ashes is written mostly in the present tense. Using the narrative past tense at the beginning to provide a context for his story, the author uses the present tense to create scenes of childhood and adolescence that seem to happen before the reader's eyes.

About the Title: The title Angela's Ashes has several meanings. First, the ashes refer to those falling from the cigarettes Frank McCourt's mother, Angela McCourt, née Sheehan, smokes constantly. Second, the ashes refer to those smoldering in the fireplace, providing little warmth during the harsh Irish winters. Additionally, Frank McCourt himself clarifies the meaning: Angela's Ashes and 'Tis, his second memoir, were to be a single book, ending after his mother's death. The memoir, however, was split in two. 'Tis ends with his mother's ashes being scattered at a graveyard in Limerick, Ireland. Therefore, the ashes in the title refer primarily to his mother's remains.