GT- Thursday Funnies

I'm so looking forward to Thursday so I can share my entry for funny book/s I've read. Here it goes:



Photo from:http://www.impawards.com/1999/angelas_ashes.html

My funny book is Angela’s Ashes, weird but true. Weird because, in a nutshell, the story is about the struggle of Frank Mccourt’s very poor family (as in below poverty line) while living in his hometown Limerick, Ireland. In a nutshell, his life is really that of an impoverished one with practically nothing to eat on a daily basis. What will make you enjoy this book is how the author narrates his life as an adolescent boy, somehow understanding what was going on in their life but his innocence, humor and guilessness as he recounts the tragedies he experienced and witnessed gives it a hilarious twist to even the saddest moments of Irish Catholic life.
Here’s an excerpt of Time’s interview with Mccourt sibling about Frank’s Angela’s Ashes: 


What kept McCourt alive then, and would make him as a writer, was his humor and his love of words. "In reality, our life was worse than Frank wrote," said McCourt's brother, also called Malachy. "Insane outbreaks of laughter saved us." McCourt once said that as a child he dreamed of being a prison inmate in the U.S., for the food and warmth. Instead he became a hospital inmate: he caught typhoid at age 10 and spent three months well fed in a well-heated hospital. The hospital also had a well-stocked library. It was there that he read his first lines of Shakespeare and began a lifetime as a devoted reader.* 


Ireland during this depression age is practically very much like Philippines in culture since they’re very devout Catholics (sometimes to a fault also) and how they succumb to gossip. One part of the story I can’t forget is how his family members made him go back several times to church and do confessions with their parish priest for something stupid he did. In this book you will see how many lived as 'Banal na Aso, Santong Kabayo' during those times. 


Another worth mentioning part of this book is Frank’s relationship with his Father. His father played a very significant role in Frank’s creation of this book, although not in a reputable way. Here’s a sample: 


 “I think my father is like the Holy Trinity with three people in him, the one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and the prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey and wants us to die for Ireland.”


Life is not a walk in the park and that is a tremendous understatement for the author McCourt but, just like us Pinoys, Irish has a way of finding humor even in the most difficult and tragic times in their life. 
Humor, no matter what form or shape, helps humanity thrive in this world.


My entry for :

*Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1911633,00.html#ixzz12KCgrRxR