| 'Tis: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Frank Mccourt
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00 (€20.54)
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (592 reviews)
Sales Rank: 539897
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Scribner 1999
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0684848783
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.7100491620092
EAN: 9780684848785
ASIN: 0684848783
Publication Date: September 21, 1999
Release Date: September 21, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Frank McCourt's glorious childhood memoir, Angela's Ashes, has been loved and celebrated by readers everywhere for its spirit, its wit and its profound humanity. A tale of redemption, in which storytelling itself is the source of salvation, it won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Rarely has a book so swiftly found its place on the literary landscape.And now we have 'Tis, the story of Frank's American journey from impoverished immigrant to brilliant teacher and raconteur. Frank lands in New York at age nineteen, in the company of a priest he meets on the boat. He gets a job at the Biltmore Hotel, where he immediately encounters the vivid hierarchies of this "classless country," and then is drafted into the army and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type reports. It is Frank's incomparable voice -- his uncanny humor and his astonishing ear for dialogue -- that renders these experiences spellbinding. When Frank returns to America in 1953, he works on the docks, always resisting what everyone tells him, that men and women who have dreamed and toiled for years to get to America should "stick to their own kind" once they arrive. Somehow, Frank knows that he should be getting an education, and though he left school at fourteen, he talks his way into New York University. There, he falls in love with the quintessential Yankee, long-legged and blonde, and tries to live his dream. But it is not until he starts to teach -- and to write -- that Frank finds his place in the world. The same vulnerable but invincible spirit that captured the hearts of readers in Angela's Ashes comes of age. As Malcolm Jones said in his Newsweek review of Angela's Ashes, "It is only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he leaves them wanting more when he is done...and McCourt proves himself one of the very best." Frank McCourt's 'Tis is one of the most eagerly awaited books of our time, and it is a masterpiece.
Amazon.com Review
The sequel to Frank McCourt's memoir of his Irish Catholic boyhood, Angela's Ashes, picks up the story in October 1949, upon his arrival in America. Though he was born in New York, the family had returned to Ireland due to poor prospects in the United States. Now back on American soil, this awkward 19-year-old, with his "pimply face, sore eyes, and bad teeth," has little in common with the healthy, self-assured college students he sees on the subway and dreams of joining in the classroom. Initially, his American experience is as harrowing as his impoverished youth in Ireland, including two of the grimmest Christmases ever described in literature. McCourt views the U.S. through the same sharp eye and with the same dark humor that distinguished his first memoir: race prejudice, casual cruelty, and dead-end jobs weigh on his spirits as he searches for a way out. A glimpse of hope comes from the army, where he acquires some white-collar skills, and from New York University, which admits him without a high school diploma. But the journey toward his position teaching creative writing at Stuyvesant High School is neither quick nor easy. Fortunately, McCourt's openness to every variety of human emotion and longing remains exceptional; even the most damaged, difficult people he encounters are richly rendered individuals with whom the reader can't help but feel uncomfortable kinship. The magical prose, with its singing Irish cadences, brings grandeur and beauty to the most sorrowful events, including the final scene, set in a Limerick graveyard. --Wendy Smith
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| Customer Reviews: Read 587 more reviews...
Nearly as Brilliant as Angela's Ashes... January 8, 2009
Picking up at almost the instant that Angela's Ashes left off, "'Tis" is a worthy successor to Angela's Ashes. A thoroughly enjoyable read, I found myself flying through the first half of the book. As his life settles down, the narrative understandably slacks a bit, the best parts are his wandering 20's and Army days.
The one thing that troubled me was his treatment of his mother, and not so much the treatment per se, but the seeming lack of understanding his motive for it. His contempt for her is thinly veiled through much of the end and it's hard to find justification for his animus in his text.
* Spoiler below *
He abandons her on her death bed, cremates her to save money for the transport to Ireland and even then waits years to scatter her ashes, while he and his brother Malachy are in uproarious laughter at her passing. This not a moral judgment, it's just he never seems to provide a case for his actions. He lets us into the most intimate corners of his mind in Angela's Ashes and yet I feel he's hiding something here. While his mother in either book is far from perfect, she was there for him, when his father abandoned the family. If I had to guess, Frank was as hypocritically angry with his mother about her dalliances with Laman as his Father's family whom he chastises for such meanness. Something which if he were as honest with us as he was in his first book, he would have accounted for.
'Tis not Kansas December 4, 2008
More "Oliver Twist" than "The Wizard of Oz" this book is not for the faint of heart. McCourt's autobiography "Angela's Ashes" had a Hollywood ending with the young immigrant (McCourt) arriving in New York to start a new life. It left readers with such high hopes. His second book "Tis" lacks the childhood innoncence of his first. In fact, the book is both tedious and somber but I still enjoyed it immensely. What ruined the book is that we know too much about McCourt's success and too little about his journey. He is brutally honest about his New York life - alcoholism, divorce, his mixed feelings about his mother, his lackluster career - and the book at times is a rambling alcoholic. But that's what makes it unique. The book is like the man; brilliant but flawed. It was a challenging read but pure tonic compared to the popcorn novels on the best sellers lists.
 'Tis worth reading October 18, 2008
This book isn't Angela's Ashes, nor should it be, but I'm disappointed that it couldn't maintain the momentum in Angela's Ashes. This book picks up where Angela left off and appropriately ends with Angela's death. The beginning of this book is filled with humor and fun scenes depicting McCourt's early days in America. Unfortunately, I found myself boring of the book about the time McCourt entered the army. Still had its humorous moments, but definitely lagging. By the time Mike became Alberta, I was counting pages to the end. This book lacked the optimism I found so endearing in Angela's Ashes, but it did give closure at the end. Taking Angela's ashes back to Ireland seemed a fitting ending to the tome. The book only vaguely glosses over what's going on with Malachy, Michael and Alphie, focuses on the hardships that are mostly McCourt's own fault. But overall, I still think the book was worth reading.
Better than Angela's Ashes, but still could have been more October 16, 2008
In `Tis we get some anecdotes about his life as a teacher & the attitudes of public school officials, students, & parents that potentially could have been good reading, but FM- oddly- seems to lapse into a bit of romanticism about those times. I went to public school in New York only a decade or so after many of the tales spun by FM so I know that much of what he relates is very buffed up. Again, why? If AA's success was so based on the misery factor it would seem that dealing with some of the worst the NYC public school system could dredge up would leave him rife with possibilities. Yet, again, he refrains. In AA FM seemed to indulge in both inner & outer misery, yet in `Tis he goes full bore only on the inner wrecks- the outer world is a hazy place that seems to frighten him, & rob him of some of the potentially better tales of his life.
Despite the relative ease of his life, compared to AA, FM seems to spend an inordinate amount of time just whining with no cause. This would not be a problem if FM used this quality for a higher purpose in a bildungsroman- but `Tis is not such a beast. It's almost as if FM wrote the book from a far place hermetically sealed off from himself, with emotions later dubbed in, but a bit off (like a Godzilla film) because he has not properly reflected long nor hard enough on his life. It's as if he's trying to convince himself of the myth of `Frank McCourt'. Having recently read The Great Gatsby for the 1st time I was struck by how similar a voice FM has in `Tis, towards his past self, is with the voice of that novel's narrator- Nick Carraway- towards the titular character. Whereas this technique works well in TGG because it allows a reader an almost scientific detachment from the events, in `Tis FM does not allow this for he deliberately hazes events & characters. Part of this is due to the book probably being too compressed & rushed in to print to coincide with the release of the film Angela's Ashes, but most of it is due to FM's understanding of human nature (& himself) not measuring up to his lyrical ability with words.
This is the basic difference between the 2 books- AA is too bloated & `Tis too compressed, AA has lesser tales, but FM explicates them better. In short, AA has some literature-worthy events that are given short-shrift, but `Tis is a series of vignettes about a very average life that's made a bit better in the telling. AA has been way overpraised, & many are already readying its spot in the literary canon, but `Tis, despite many manifest flaws, is a better book- albeit only slightly.
Yet, I cannot help but wonder what might have been done with these tales had FM 1st cut his teeth on a few novels, then mastered prose well enough to really hit a couple of home runs. Oh well- here's what we're left with: on a scale of 1-100 Angela's Ashes rates about a 75-80 while `Tis is in the 80-85 range. Somewhere, though, the bell rings in at 100, & Angela McCourt takes her place in literature- it's just not in this life, either.
 Bad Service October 14, 2008
After numerous attempts to contactthe seller, Istill have not received the book. Connie spahr 10/13/2008
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