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June 12, 2005
Book: Angela's Ashes
The Friends of the San Francisco Public Library had a book sale at the Fort Mason Center this past weekend -- books were $1 and children's books only $.25. I managed to snag about six books during a lunch break and read the first of the stack today. Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt is a bleak and unsparing memoir describing the author's impoverished childhood in Brooklyn and Ireland. McCourt cleanly recounts death upon death, disease upon disease, and begging for food and coal. Enjoy may not be an appropriate way to describe my experience with this book, but I do recommend it.
p. 316
But Mrs. O'Connell and Miss Barry don't know what it's like in the lane when you knock on a door and someone says come in and you go in and there's no light and there's a pile of rags on a bed in a corner the pile saying who is it and you say telegram and the pile of rags tells you would you ever go to the shopr for me I'm starving with the hunger and I'd give me two eyes for a cup of tea and what are you going to do say I'm busy and ride off on your bike and leave the pile of rags there with a telegram money order that's pure useless because the pile of rags is helpless to get out of the bed to go to the post office to cash the bloody money order.
What are you supposed to do?