I have not seen the film but the book impressed me: The extremely proverty of the family – no boots, no clothes, nothing to eat…- and the behaviour of the society arround them, especially to say the miserable attitude of the Irish Catholic childhood that not only doesn’t assist Angela and her family but also they judge them.
In addition, I have to say that it’s hard to be comprehensible Angela’s mother and her sister. They disapprove the marriage of Angela with her husband – a protestant from Belfast- and that’s the reason by they give no help to them.
Frank, the eldest, develops typhoid and chronic conjunctivitis, and is hospitalized
twice, but in spite of the fact of having a lot of hard troubles to survival he seems to be his thoughts on the good things that expect to come.
His life starts changing when he became a telegram delivery boy at the Post Office. He save money to realise his dream: to come back to America.
The story ends when Frank – at his 19 - sails into a ship to New York to begin a new life.