NOVEL THOUGHTS
………
SCRIBNER, 1996
(available in paperback from Scribner, 1999)
THE MATERIAL and intellectual deprivations of Irish slum life in the 1930s and 1940s are recounted in heart-wrenching detail in this memoir of an impoverished childhood in Limerick, Ireland, which earned Frank McCourt a Pulitzer Prize in 1997. The title is a tribute to McCourt’s long-suffering mother, Angela, who would smoke her Woodbines by the fire while waiting in vain for her husband to come home with his pay. McCourt managed to find the absurd in his tragic past, making his story of deprivation ultimately an uplifting one.
Born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants, Frank McCourt was the son of a well-meaning but alcoholic father who had a habit of drinking his pay. Malachy McCourt often regaled his eldest son with stories of Cuchulain, a great hero of Ireland, tales that resonated with McCourt throughout his young childhood. McCourt revered his father, but Malachy constantly disappointed. Chronically unemployed, he often came home drunk in the dead of night, rousing McCourt and his four siblings from bed with loud song and making them swear to die for Ireland.
Malachy’s employment woes and the sudden death of their youngest child drove the family back to Ireland. Here, in the slums of Limerick, McCourt paints a powerful portrait of a family living on the edge of disaster. Malachy continued to have difficulty holding a job, and his drinking binges persisted as Angela sought handouts from the charitable Saint Vincent de Paul Society to feed and clothe her children. The stench of the nearby lavatory, shared by every family on the street, constantly filled their apartment. At one point, for lack of money to buy coal, the family fueled their stove with wood pulled from the walls of their apartment; at another, McCourt walked to school with rubber-tire patches flapping from his shoes, shamed and disgraced.
McCourt’s account resonates with boyish mischief and Catholic guilt, with curiosity and sexual awakening, and always with humor. He recounts his First Communion, when he vomited the Lord’s body in his grandmother’s backyard, and she dragged him to confession to ask the priest the proper way to clean it up. Simmering below the surface of McCourt’s humor, though, is his growing desire to escape slum life for something better.
During World War II, Malachy moved to England in search of work and was barely heard from again. Angela and her children soldiered on, sometimes on the dole and sometimes begging. At fourteen, feeling he had at last reached manhood, McCourt quit school and landed the first in a series of jobs that would eventually earn him passage back to America.
During his childhood years, deprivation and relentless hunger prompted McCourt to focus on the elusive object of his desire. Seeing food—but not having it—was a constant torment. Mr. O’Neill, his fourth-class teacher, pared apples slowly in front of the class, dangling the peel tauntingly as a prize for correct answers. When Fintan Slattery, a classmate, invited McCourt and another impoverished peer to his house, the boys spied a sandwich and a glass of milk on the kitchen table. To McCourt, the milk looked “creamy and cool and delicious and the sandwich bread is almost as white.” Although Fintan sliced his sandwich into quarters, then eighths, and then sixteenths, he never offered them a bite. It was a cruel act, a form of torture.
Scenes involving fantasies of food abound in Angela’s Ashes. When his father brought home his wages on Fridays, McCourt would drift off to sleep with thoughts of the next day’s delights: eggs, fried tomatoes, fried bread, tea with sugar and milk, dinner of mashed potatoes, peas, ham, “and a trifle Mam makes, layers of fruit and warm delicious custard on a cake soaked in sherry.” After Malachy moved to England in search of work, McCourt fantasized about the egg he would enjoy when his father’s telegraph money order arrived: “Tap it around the top, gently crack the shell, lift with a spoon, a dab of butter down into the yolk, salt, take my time, a dip of the spoon, scoop, scoop, more salt, more butter, into the mouth, oh, God above, if heaven has a taste it must be an egg with butter and salt …”
Somehow, McCourt’s humor helped him endure the indignities of a childhood filled with want. In a February 1997 interview, he recalled sitting around the dinner table with his brothers: “We laughed at diets! We heard Americans did that! Seemed ridiculous. We’d sit at dinner, still hungry, as always, and say, ‘I don’t want any more’—as if we had enough. Just saying that sent us into stitches.”
Bread is a staple of even the poorest Irish families. Throughout Angela’s Ashes, bread appears in countless situations: mashed with milk and sugar to make “bread and goody” for McCourt’s twin baby brothers; slathered with jam for a Christmas treat; secreted in Uncle Pat’s pocket, so he wouldn’t have to share; stolen from the doorsteps of the rich. A Limerick neighbor, Nora Malloy, begs for flour after her husband spends his wages on drink, and then bakes bread obsessively, fearful that her children will starve.
According to Malachi McCormick, in Irish Country Cooking (HarperCollins, 1988), “Everybody agrees that soda bread is the most famous Irish bread, but there is no such agreement on how it should be made.” Some recipes include raisins plumped up in whiskey or water, others add sour cream or soured eggnog to the buttermilk. Whatever its ingredients, Irish soda bread brings to mind Frank McCourt’s question: “After the egg, is there anything in the world lovelier than fresh warm bread and a mug of sweet golden tea?”
Katherine Thomerson, owner of the Frugal Frigate Book Store in Redlands, California, contributed her family recipe for Irish Brown Soda Bread, which she baked for the store’s A Room of Her Own Book Club. Thomerson’s recipe for this brown, crusty bread was passed down from her great-grandmother and great-great-grandfather, an Irish Baptist circuit preacher from Galway. She suggests serving the bread with butter and grape or peach jam.
3 cups all-purpose flour 2 cups whole wheat flour 1 tablespoon baking powder 2 teaspoons baking soda |
4 teaspoons brown sugar (use more for sweeter bread) mixed with 1 tablespoon water 2¼ cups buttermilk |
Adjust oven rack to center position and preheat to 325°F. Place both flours, the baking powder, baking soda, and brown sugar in a large bowl and mix very well. Add the buttermilk and stir until a soft dough is formed. Knead the dough in the bowl, then empty onto a wood board or counter and knead a bit longer. If the dough seems wet, use extra whole wheat flour. Knead until dough comes together.
Divide the dough into 2 portions and shape each into a round loaf. Press down just to flatten a bit. Place the loaves on an ungreased baking sheet. Sprinkle some additional flour on top of each loaf. Using a sharp carving knife, make a cross on the top of each. Allow to rest for 10 minutes, covered with a cloth, then bake for 40 minutes or until the loaves are golden brown and done to taste. Allow to cool, then serve with butter and jam.
Yield: 2 loaves
NOVEL THOUGHTS
The Portola Hills Book Group, formed by a group of neighbors in the eponymous California town, incorporates culinary creativity and fun into every book club discussion. “We think having food, drink, or something related to the book enhances the book club experience,” says cofounder Lynne Sales. “It adds a sensual element.”
The book that touched members most profoundly was Angela’s Ashes. “The book was depressing but so well written,” says Sales. “Frank McCourt has a unique voice.” Sales added that the group had a particularly good discussion because one member, Eileen McGervey, felt a strong personal connection to McCourt’s story.
McGervey’s husband, Francis, or Frank, as he is called, is one of a group of several thousand people born in Ireland to unwed mothers between 1949 and 1972 and quietly shipped to America for adoption. Adopted by an Irish-American family at the age of two, as an adult Frank traveled to England to be reunited with his biological family. The story of Frank McGervey’s beginnings in Ireland touched the group deeply and helped them better appreciate Frank McCourt’s memoir. “My husband’s story helped confirm the authenticity of McCourt’s experiences to the group,” says McGervey. “The way in which religion drove Frank McCourt’s family touched a chord. Even though they endured hardships, they still had faith. My husband’s family, too, felt that as long as they went to church on Sunday, everything else would be taken care of.” McGervey added that her husband’s story of poverty helped give context to McCourt’s account. “When the group understood better the world McCourt was living in, some of the decisions people made, like spending their last dollar on cigarettes, made more sense,” she says.
For her group’s discussion of Angela’s Ashes, Eileen McGervey served tea and Irish soda bread. McGervey’s Irish soda bread recipe came from her mother-in-law, as did the cream-colored teapot covered with Irish shamrocks used to serve the tea. “My mother- and father-in-law are very Irish, and they were intent on adopting an Irish child,” explains McGervey. “Ever since I met my husband, at age fifteen, he warned me not to tell his parents that I don’t have a drop of Irish blood in me!”
More Food for Thought
Mary Breen’s Boston-area book club enjoyed an Irish feast of vegetarian shepherd’s pie, boxty (Irish potato and onion pancakes), green salad, and Irish soda bread for their discussion of Angela’s Ashes. “I’d like to say we had Guinness, too,” says Breen, “but our group never drinks!” They topped the meal off with a berry trifle that member Erika Gardiner brought in spite of its English, rather than Irish, roots.
At their meeting, Breen’s group listened to a recording of an interview with Frank McCourt. “Between reading the book, hearing the author’s voice, and eating the Irish food, this was a meeting that involved all our senses,” says Breen.
The Movie Stars Book Club of Portland, Oregon, enjoyed baked potatoes with all the fixins—butter, sour cream, cheese, chives, broccoli, chili, and salsa—for their discussion of Angela’s Ashes. “The fact that Angela’s Ashes was set in Ireland during a poverty-stricken time in the life of Frank McCourt made me think of the great potato famine,” says Sandi Hildreth, who hosted the meeting. “Potatoes seemed like a thematically appropriate food.”