Frank McCourt writes this memoir of his childhood and adolescence in Ireland in order to come to terms, after the death of his parents, with the past that formed him, and to write a darkly comic tale conveying what it was like to grow up in poverty in Limerick, Ireland, in the 1930s and early 1940s. What makes this memoir come alive is its comic tone, poised on a razor's edge between horror and laughter: you don't know whether to laugh or to cry as McCourt tells stories so terrible they might easily win a competition for worst childhood of all.

McCourt wants to show that poverty in Ireland was worse than poverty in the United States, and he says that his mother made a mistake in thinking the family would do better on the dole in Ireland than staying put in New York during the Depression. He recounts a story of a class system in which people like his schoolteachers, further up the class ladder, and priests, also more privileged, could often be callous as to the experience of poor children like him, if only because there were so many poor. He tells of the teacher who would slowly peel his apple with his knife at lunchtime, while the hungry schoolchildren, who never got fresh fruit (or, for that matter, lunch), watched him enviously, and he spins comic gold from the tale of the well-fed priests who gave his hungry family a piece of meat that consisted almost entirely of unappealing fat.

McCourt's story carries the message that even a person from the worst deprivation can manage to make something of his life, given the right opportunities, but one wonders what would have happened to McCourt, who was born in the United States, had he not been able to leave Ireland and take advantage of the G.I. bill and the United States' booming post-war economy. So one purpose this book fulfills is to show that a society that offers people a hand up does make a difference.

Frank McCourt writes this book for several reasons. First, he writes that, in considering his childhood, "I wonder how I survived at all" (page 11). He writes that his poor Irish Catholic childhood brought with it unending misery, including his alcoholic father and his "pious defeated mother" (page 11). In part, he examines the strength and love of storytelling that he developed from a childhood in which he endured a great deal of suffering.

In addition, the book can be read as a kind of paean to his mother, Angela, who survives, despite the deaths of three of her children, her husband's alcoholism, and her grinding poverty. In spite of it all, she is hopeful at times; for example, when her husband gets a job at the cement factory in Limerick, she hopes against hope that he will bring home his wages and that they will be able to have a "lovely tea" (page 109). Her husband, however, loses his job, and the family returns to being on the dole, but Angela has the strength to endure suffering, and this book is a tribute to her strength. 

Finally, McCourt also wants to explain his family's return to the United States. While his parents were married in New York, they decided to return to Ireland when he was four. Eventually, as a young man, McCourt returns to the land of his birth, feeling that America is the land of promise and Ireland a lost land. It's an interesting story of immigration and of the promise of the American Dream.

This novel is a "coming-of-age" story about Frank McCourt's childhood. One of the most revealing quotations from the novel is,

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was of course, a miserable childhood. . . . Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”

McCourt details this miserable childhood in frank, humorous, and honest terms. He does not feel sorry for himself, even though he could. His purpose is to let the reader understand the era that he grew up in and see that "this too shall pass" and you can win in life no matter what your early years may be like. His three main themes in this memoir are poverty, the destructive effects of alcohol, and religion; specifically Catholicism.