Teacher Man by Frank McCourt -- book review

Teacher Man is Frank McCourt's third book, a follow-up to his memoirs Angela's Ashes & 'Tis. Teacher Man is a sort of patchwork memoir. There are many charming stories of McCourt's experiences while teaching, but it lacks the cohesive and narrative drive of his previous efforts. Fans of Angela's Ashes will probably enjoy reading Teacher Man, and it is selling well among educators, but I can't really recommend it highly.

Angela's Ashes was such a gripping and beautifully wrought book that many readers, myself among them, grew attached to the Frank McCourt we met through reading the book. I couldn't wait for 'Tis to come out, and I had high hopes for it. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy it nearly as much as Angela's Ashes. In thinking about why this might be so, I've come to a couple of conclusions. Angela's Ashes was written after the death of McCourt's mother, who was a major character in his memoir. It seems to me that McCourt wrote more honestly and intimately in Angela's Ashes, possibly because he needn't fear that what he wrote would hurt the people he loved. I think, too, that its possible that the distance between the time of writing and the time of the experience might have helped McCourt to write Angela's Ashes. The immediacy of the writing in Angela's Ashes is one of its great strength, but it is an immediacy filtered through memory, and memory tinged with the wisdom of age.

Both 'Tis and Teacher Man suffer by comparison to Angela's Ashes for me. The are interesting and readable books, and they benefit from McCourt's narrative voice, but they are more like collections of anecdotes than memoirs.

A biographical interview with Frank McCourt can be found here:
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mcc1bio-1