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'Tis: A Memoir
by Frank McCourt
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Scribner (1999-09-21)
ISBN: 0684848783
EAN: 9780684848785
Dewey Decimal #: 974.7100491620092
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 368 pages
Edition: Scribner 1999
Release Date: 1999-09-21
SKU: 68707
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: Minor shelf wear, great buy!
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Editorial Reviews
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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.
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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
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Mixed Feelings
Rating  (3)
Date: 2010-08-25
As a little boy growing up in abject poverty in Ireland, Frank McCourt probably seemed like the last person in the world who would someday write a successful memoir(s). Which just goes to prove that everyone--not just the rich and famous--has a story to tell.
McCourt came back to America (he was born in Brooklyn but grew up in Limerick, Ireland) at age 19 in an attempt to forge a new life and wipe the slate clean on his past. He wasn't altogether successful though--as the years went on, he became more and more like his own father, an alcoholic who had abandoned his wife and young children. But despite his many personal failings, there was a lot to admire about Frank McCourt: his persistence, his lifelong love of literature and his talent for teaching, to name just a few things.
McCourt had a unique style of writing, which readers will probably love or intensely dislike. I have to put myself in the latter camp. The long, rambling run-on sentences and lack of quotation marks made the story very hard to follow at times. Also, McCourt's tone is very flat throughout the book. I never felt any love between McCourt and his wife, or anyone else for that matter, except his daughter. The only times he showed any real emotion was when he was talking about Maggie, his only child. But with everyone else, McCourt seemed very detached and unemotional, almost as if was writing about someone else's life.
Also, McCourt had a tendency to jump around and leave out important information, leaving me completely confused at times. I can't help but wonder:
* What happened to the new house and little plot of land that his mother was so proud of in Ireland? She came to New York to visit her sons one Christmas and apparently never returned to her home in Ireland. A simple one-sentence explanation would have sufficed.
* Why did Alberta (a.k.a. "Mike"), the stunningly beautiful co-ed, fall in love with the skinny Irishman with bad eyes and teeth? Also, what happened to McCourt's eye condition? Did it clear up by itself?
* At the end of one chapter, McCourt was teaching full-time at a vocational school in Staten Island. At the start of the next chapter, he's suddenly teaching at a school in Manhattan, but only part-time? What happened at the first school?
* The book covers the 36-year period from 1949 to 1985. In the late 1960s, the real-life McCourt returned to Ireland and spent 18 months at Trinity College in Dublin working on his PhD (which he didn't complete). Yet these years of his life are never even mentioned in the book, not even in passing!
Although this should have been a fascinating book, I had to force myself to finish it. I never read McCourt's first memoir, "Angela Ashes" (although I loved the movie), and from what I gather from the other reviews, it sounds like a better book. Nonetheless, "'Tis" does have its moments and the ending is haunting and quite moving.
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Not worth reading
Rating  (2)
Date: 2010-07-18
0 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Publisher: "After the success of Angela's Ashes, you could make a lot of money if you wrote another book."
McCourt: "But I don't really have the material for another story."
Publisher: "I didn't say it had to be a good book."
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"Tis" good
Rating (3)
Date: 2010-05-22
0 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
This was a good book but not something I would care to re read.
It gets predictable in a lot of ways.
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Tis
Rating  (5)
Date: 2010-04-11
This audio book was fantastic, especially because it was read by the author. I had the honor of meeting Frank McCourt and thought he and his life were very special. Thank you for having this in stock so I could order it,
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Tis a great book, tis.
Rating (5)
Date: 2010-03-10
I had Frank McCourt's memoir, Angela's Ashes, on my bookshelf for months before I read it. I enjoyed it so much that I purchased the next two books he wrote, Tis, and Teacher Man. I just finished Tis and was so sorry when I finished the last chapter and wanted to read it again. Part of this stems from being a historian and Irish, I am sure; reading about an Irish man in the 1940's and 50's put my own parents lives in a different perspective for me. I would greatly recommend this book!
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