People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version." Exhibit A is the author of that gloomy sentence: Frank McCourt, 66, a retired New York City public school teacher who was born in Depression-racked Brooklyn but spent his formative years in the dank slums of Limerick.
Jobs were as scarce in Ireland as they had been in America, but life did not much improve on those rare occasions when Frank's father Malachy found work. As McCourt recalls in a spunky, bittersweet memoir called Angela's Ashes (Scribner; 364 pages; $24), his...
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