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 boy 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.
Leather-bound, signed, first edition book in very good condition.