"My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four ... When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive 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." So begins the memoir of Frank McCourt, raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland in the 1930s and 40s. The author chronicles his impoverished childhood and early experiences in the Catholic church, and describes his father's alcoholism and talent for storytelling, as well as the challenges and tragedies his mother faced, balancing painful memories with humor.