Thank you so very much for the wonderful comment! To be continued in Limerick☘️

Angela's Ashes, Controversy, Frank McCourt: “The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.”
McCourt, Angela’s Ashes
Ref:The Irish Post
To be continued in Limerick

What really happened: the Ashes refers both to the cigarettes that Frank’s mother smoked one after the other, and the ‘ashes’ of her life: struggling to raise her remaining children with no income and an absent husband, in houses which leaked or flooded while still grieving the loss of three babies.

✍️ The Name

When I was a child I didn’t know much about Angela’s Ashes except that it was set in my hometown of Limerick, and that the story was not suitable for children my age. The name didn’t give much away—my young mind pictured a woman carrying around a pot of ashes with her at all times.

The Redemptorist Church, which is appears many times in the book, would not allow filming to take place within their walls, as they too were unhappy with the depiction of the church in McCourt’s memoir. So the crew had to pack up and film the church scenes in Inchicore, Dublin.
-By Rachael O’Connor✍️

The Filming Locations

While much of the film was indeed set in Limerick, locals will proudly tell you that the city had undergone such a transformation in the sixty years between his childhood and the film being shot that the film crew had to go to the nearby city of Cork to get shots of the slums.

Angela’s Christmas’ is an animated short film which again revolves around Frank’s mother, but this time when she was a little girl in Limerick in the 1910’s, before any of the tragedy of her adulthood befell her. The city of Limerick is shown in a much more positive light than his childhood memoir.

Angela’s Christmas

On a much more positive note, a spin-off of Angela’s Ashes was released in November 2018 and is a heartwarming true story of a happy family at Christmas time.

McCourt’s own mother, Angela herself, is said to have stood up during a show where her sons were telling stories of the past and called the stories out as lies, saying “It didn’t happen that way!”

When the book was first brought out, some people in Limerick were very unhappy with how their beloved city was portrayed, and the fact that McCourt had ‘named and shamed’ people, affecting their lives and that of their families.

McCourt is still celebrated in his hometown, and Limerick is home to the Frank McCourt museum, which includes artwork and murals as well as memorabilia like McCourt’s old schoolbooks, which were donated by former pupils of the school.

The Frank McCourt Museum

While some in Limerick were offended at the depiction of their city in the Pulitzer Prize winning book, many more found it to be an important historical artefact.

While the family were there, they also scattered some of his ashes from Carrigogunnell Castle which overlooks the River Shannon, so that a part of him would always remain in the city he once called home.

For the fans:

Frank’s Ashes

In a fitting end to the acclaimed author, after his death in 2009, his wife and three brothers returned to Limerick in order to unveil a bust of McCourt in the city outside the Frank McCourt museum.

Passing through Limerick and blessing Angela’s Ashes. Angela greets me in her green coat, standing at the corner of the rain-soaked, coal-dusted narrow lanes.