Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > McCourt, Frank - Denis Donoghue (review date 15 September 1996)

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Denis Donoghue (review date 15 September 1996)

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...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Malcolm Jones Jr. (review date 2 September 1996)
   2. Denis Donoghue (review date 15 September 1996)
   3. Michiko Kakutani (review date 17 September 1996)
   4. Nina King (review date 29 September 1996)
   5. Malcolm Jones Jr. (essay date 25 August 1997)
4. Copyright