作者 Frank McCourt 於1930 年 8 月19 日出生在紐約﹐四歲時跟父母返回愛爾蘭﹐


十九歲獨自回到紐約。





他一共寫了三本回憶錄。第一本「Angela's Ashes」在一九九六年出版﹐當時他已


經六十五歲了。這本書寫他父母以及他出生後的生活﹐一直寫到他十八歲要到美國


的前夕。這本書獲得 Pulitzer Prize。第二本「'Tis 」出版於一九九九年﹐寫他


抵達美國後一直到大學畢業當老師的生活。第三本「Teacher Man」出版於二零零五


年﹐描寫他三十年的教書生涯。





「Angela's Ashes」是讓人在閱讀中會笑中帶淚也在淚裡含笑的一本書。





這個筆記﹐是在自己有限的時間中﹐一小段一小段的記錄自己閱讀的感受。





法蘭克四歲時﹐跟父母﹐三歲的弟弟 Malachy﹐一歲的雙包胎弟弟 Oliver 和 Eugene 


返回愛爾蘭的 Limerick。那時他的妹妹 Margaret 已經去世了。





他回顧自己的童年﹐難以想像自己是如何在這樣悽慘的日子中生存下來的。





從大西洋來的雨水經 Shannon 河帶到 Limerick﹐使得此地潮濕不堪﹐造成很多人


感染許多疾病﹐包括肺結核。





(2007-02-13)                        














【附錄原文】





My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and 


married and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was 


four, my brother, Malachy, three, the twins, Oliver and Eugene, barely one, 


and my sister, Margaret, dead and gone.





When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of 


course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. 


Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, 


and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.





People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, 


but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless 


loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; 


pompous priest; bullying schoolmaster; the English and the terrible things 


they did to us for eight hundred long years.





Above all – we were wet.





Out in the Atlantic Ocean great sheets of rain gathered to drift slowly up the 


River Shannon and settle forever in Limerick. The rain dampened the city 


from the Feast of the Circumcision to New Year’s Eve. It created a 


cacophony of hacking coughs, bronchial rattles, asthmatic wheezes, 


consumptive croaks. It turned noses into fountains, lungs into bacterial 


sponges. It provoked cures galore; to ease the catarrh you boiled onions 


in milk blackened with pepper; for the congested passages you made a 


paste of boiled flour and nettles, wrapped it in a rag, and slapped it, 


sizzling, on the chest.





From October to April the walls of Limerick glistened with the damp. 


Clothes never dried: tweed and woolen coats housed living things, 


sometimes sprouted mysterious vegetations. In pubs, steam rose 


from damp bodies and garments to be inhaled with cigarette and pipe 


smoke laced with the stale fumes of spilled stout and whiskey and tinged 


with the odor of piss wafting in from the outdoor jakes where many a 


man puked up his week’s wages.





The rain drove us into the church – our refuge,  our strength, our only 


dry place. At Mass, Benediction, novenas, we huddled in great damp 


clumps, dozing through priest drone, while steam rose again from our 


clothes to mingle with the sweetness of incense, flowers and candles.





Limerick gained a reputation for piety, but we knew it was only the rain.