"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." That was Frank McCourt reading the opening lines of his book Angela's Ashes, released in nineteen ninety-six. This Irish American author best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography Angela's Ashes that recorded his poor upbringing, died of cancer on Sunday, The New York Times reported. He was 78. Born in New York City, he was the eldest of seven children born to Irish immigrant parents. Angela's Ashes was a memoir that captured an irresponsible, drunkard father with a gift for story-telling. When not drunk, his father was absent, turning his back on a family so poor, McCourt wrote, that they were reduced to burning the furniture in their rented hut to keep warm. His mother struggled to raise her many children after his father left the family. Already struggling when the Great Depression hit, the family moved back to Limerick, where they slipped ever deeper into poverty in the  1930s. Three of McCourt's siblings died of diseases worsened by hunger and the wretchedness of their surroundings. McCourt himself almost died of typhoid  fever as  a child. In Angela's Ashes, he wrote of hunger, a home flooded with rainwater and the unbearable humiliation of seeking handouts from charities in the Irish city. But he told the story in a way that is expressive, warm and light-hearted. Frank McCourt left Ireland at the age of nineteen to return to New York City where he was born. He earned a degree in- English education and taught creative writing for nearly thirty years. After retiring in nineteen eighty-seven, he decided to write about his childhood. "Angela's Ashes" became a huge success and brought McCourt a 1997 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and other honors. Millions of copies of the book were sold worldwide and it was adapted into a 1999 movie starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle. By saying "The happy childhood is hardly worth your while", the writer really means that_.
a lot of readers don't deserve happy childhood his childhood is not worth of others' sympathy his childhood is mixed with happiness and misery smooth childhood surely will not draw readers' attention