During my junior year of high school, I let my prom date borrow my copy of Angela’s Ashes. Borrow, being the key term, and to this day I wait for him to return it to me (on occasion, I’ll still bring it up). I kind of accepted the fact that my original copy is lost in the depths of his old bedroom; I had to buy a new copy for when I attended a Frank McCourt book signing. But I felt like an impostor. Here I was, fan for over 10 years, with a copy of his first book that I had just purchased that day. Shameful.

In my eyes, he was the father of the modern memoir. When Angela’s Ashes was released, we had seen nothing like it. We didn’t read about messed-up childhoods and families. Most of us didn’t know what a memoir was. But he made us love it. And with his subsequent novels, we learned more than we could have ever known about anyone. I actually cried at the end of ‘Tis. He made you get emotionally attached.

I applaud those students that talked him into publishing his story. Otherwise, we would have missed out on one of the greatest writers of our time.

Sunday, 26 July 2009   ♦   books