Bettie's Books

Blurbies - 'Tis begins where Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of his miserable childhood in Ireland and finally his re-immigration to America, left off. ('Tis is also the last word in the earlier book!)The book begins as McCourt lands in Albany, New York, and quickly makes his way to New York City. McCourt, friendless and clueless about American customs, struggles to integrate himself into American blue-collar society. He is then drafted into the US Army, sent to Europe, and rises to the rank of corporal. On his stay in Germany, he has confrontations with many people who try to show Frank how to get a Russian refugee girl to have sexual intercourse with him by giving her coffee or cigarettes. He visits his mother on leave from the army as compensation for his exceptional service as a type writer and goes back home to Ireland to see his family. He then decides to return to the US again. Upon returning to the United States, he attends New York University despite never having graduated high school. He falls in love with and eventually marries a middle-class American-born Yankee he meets at college.After graduating from NYU, he teaches English and Social Studies at McKee Vocational and Technical High School. There, he is forced to deal with apathetic, indifferent students. Eventually, he moves on to teaching at the prestigious Stuyvesant High School. At Stuyvesant, he revises his teaching style and stops heavily relying on books and other teaching resources, developing his own teaching style and becoming an effective teacher.Hahahaha - the author reads this with nary a breath or punctuation and his brogue is as hypnotising as Kaa's eyes are in the Disney film of Jungle Book. Humorous, heart-breaking, astounding and shocking, this memoir has it all.