Michiko Kakutani concluded her review in The New York Times of Angela's Ashes by saying that "The reader of this stunning memoir can only hope that Mr. McCourt will set down the story of his subsequent adventures in America in another book. Angela's Ashes is so good it deserves a sequel." McCourt "has used the storytelling gifts he inherited from his father to write a book that redeems the pain of his early years with wit and compassion and grace." The book is compared "with The Liars Club by Mary Karr and Andre Aciman's Out of Egypt as a classic modern memoir." McCourt writes without bitterness about his epic tale of woe, though "there is plenty a less generous writer might well be judgmental about." The review is peppered with quotations from the book showing the author's style. Kakutani remarks that "Writing in prose that's pictorial and tactile, lyrical but streetwise, Mr. McCourt does for the town of Limerick what the young Joyce did for Dublin: he conjures the place for us with such intimacy that we feel we've walked its streets and crawled its pubs." This review is strong in its analysis of the book as well-written and modern, comparable with great writers. The scope of the "memoir is not just the story of his family's struggles, but the story of his own sentimental education: his discovery of poetry and girls, and his efforts to come to terms with God and death and faith. By 11, he's the chief breadwinner for the family. By 15, he's lost his first girlfriend to tuberculosis. By 19, he's saved enough money to make his escape to the States."
