I’m continuing on with my Frank McCourt theme. His second memoir, ‘Tis, is very much a continuation from Angela’s Ashes, starting off where the other one ended with his boat trip to America. In ‘Tis we see Frank McCourt go through the struggles of immigration, and growing up, trying to make his dreams come true.
There are so many parts of this book that relate to every day life but one of my favorite stories comes at the beginning. Frank is looking forward to going to see Hamlet at the movies and plans to bring in ginger ale and lemon meringue pie so that, “I’ll have the tartness of ginger ale and the sweetness of pie clashing away in my mouth.” He reads Hamlet the week before in preparation, sneaks the food and drink in and ends up in the bathroom trying to eat and drink as the noise of his wrappers got him shushed out of the theater. He ends up breaking the glass bottle and getting chased out of the theater by the manager. The last sentence of the story reads, “…wonder why America is so hard and complicated that I have trouble going to see Hamlet with a lemon meringue pie and a bottle of ginger ale.” It seems so true that sometimes the things we look forward to most end up crumbling down around us.
McCourt goes through different jobs, different boarding homes and eventually the army. He comes back and finally goes to university while bringing over different brothers from Ireland to give them their shot at the American dream. Again, this story only ends where the last one left off and I was so happy to get a chance to hear more from this wonderful writer.
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