Reviewing the book at its publication in 1996, John Blades wrote in the "Chicago Tribune" that "Like McCourt himself, "Angela's Ashes" is a bundle of contradictions, as uproarious as they are grievous, whether the young Frankie is pushing his baby brother around Limerick, dumping loose coal and turf into his pram; his "pious, defeated" mother is begging a sheep's head for their Christmas dinner; or his soused father is rousing the boys in the middle of the night to sing "Kevin Barry" and other patriotic Irish songs." The book event was held in at the Mercury Theater and the adjoining Chicago bar; the book is a debut for McCourt but he had "been a familiar figure on local stages during the '80s. Billing themselves as "A Couple of Blaguards," he and his younger brother, Malachy, re-enacted their Limerick boyhood in story, song and verse for audiences at the Royal George and other theaters." McCourt's book places "McCourt's mother, Angela, the nominal heroine of his memoir, eternally on the dole, pathetically trying to clothe and feed her sons. But it's the blackguard father, also named Malachy, who obsesses McCourt, and who commandeers center stage in his memoir, long after he's abandoned his wife and family." At the book event, McCourt notes that most of the reviews of his memoir call it "lyrical and charming," but he says that "what gives Irish writing its distinctive flavor is not the charming stuff but the darkness."