SOURCE: "From 'Ashes' to Stardom," in Newsweek, August 25, 1997, pp. 66-70.

[In the following essay, Jones discusses the popular and literary success of Angela's Ashes, describing the book as "the publishing event of the decade."]

Frank McCourt is not without sin. But no one could confess with more charm. In the course of defending the accuracy of his memoir, Angela's Ashes, McCourt admits that he erred at least once, a mistake he discovered last October when he traveled back to Limerick, the Irish city where his Pulitzer Prize-winning account of growing up poor is set. He was autographing books in a bookstore when a man approached and introduced himself as Willie Harrell, one of the boys that little Frankie McCourt grew up with. "Weak and leaning on a stick and looking like he was 100 years old," Harrell congratulated McCourt on a fine job of writing. Then he leaned across...