Washington Post Staff Writer November 30, 1997

"Indeed, while opinion about the book (Angela's Ashes') is divided, the naysayers may have the edge in Limerick.

When McCourt comes back to the city for book tours, irate residents are there to meet him, challenging his memory and questioning his anecdotes.

"Every time he comes to Limerick and puts his head above the parapet, there's someone firing at him." "There's a lot of begrudgery about it in the home town," agrees Eddie Daly, a clerk in O'Mahony's bookstore on O'Connell Street, where a table in front is piled high with something called "Ashes," a copycat memoir by Gerard Hannan.

"That book was written as a retort to `Angela's Ashes,' " Daly says,

"but it doesn't have the same feeling. Hannan has an ax to grind."

Reaction: This journalist did not have the common courtesy to make contact with me or indeed to read my book. Her allegation that I have 'an ax to grind' is shocking to me and I feel that it unfairly depicts me as some kind of obsessed fool and I have not ruled out the option of suing this paper for liable.