RELIVING HIS BAD EIRE DAYS

By John Elson

People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version." Exhibit A is the author of that gloomy sentence: Frank McCourt, 66, a retired New York City public school teacher who was born in Depression-racked Brooklyn but spent his formative years in the dank slums of Limerick.

Jobs were as scarce in Ireland as they had been in America, but life did not much improve on those rare occasions when Frank's father Malachy found work. As McCourt recalls in a spunky, bittersweet memoir called Angela's Ashes (Scribner; 364 pages; $24), his dad was both a kindly parent and a world-class rummy. Sober enough during the week, on paydays Malachy McCourt would guzzle away his wages at a pub and, late Friday night, stagger home, penniless. There, while his wife Angela wept and railed, he would coax his sons into singing old patriot tunes and roar that they must be ready to die for Ireland. Next morn, as oft as not, he would be too groggy for work. And thus was another job lost.

Somehow the McCourts got by, on driblets from Eire's dole and Angela's uppity kin, who berated her for marrying a sodden Ulsterman. Christmas dinner was no stuffed goose, but a lowly pig's head. No wonder young Frank dimly viewed Catholic priests preaching sacrifice to the pews while lorries delivered riches to their rectories. "Lent, my arse," he mused. "What are we to give up when we have Lent all year long?"

Like an unpredicted glimmer of midwinter sunshine, cheerfulness keeps breaking into this tale of Celtic woe. McCourt's set piece accounts of his First Communion and his adventures as a post-office messenger, for example, are riotously funny. Plus Angela's Ashes has a cheerful ending. At 19, Frank leaves home for America, where jobs now are easier to find. Good cess to the luck that brought him through.

--By John Elson