This book is a disappointment after Angela's Ashes. McCourt's "all about me" excursion fails to capture the reader as the life he reports is neither good enough nor evil enough to be of interest. One keeps waiting for McCourt to either enjoy the bohemian life he is drawn to or else reach a turning point in which he accepts the middle class life he toys with. But instead the reader is forced to wade through page after page of Irish Catholic guilt impotent to bring anything more to the author's life than self pity. Hopefully McCourt has not expended all his creative his energy on giving us more than enough information about his own life and will now use his remarkable writing talent to create something worthy of his capability.