““When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all,” the book’s second paragraph begins in a famous passage. “It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. “People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and all the terrible things they did to us for 800 long years.”” Question 15 options: a) He is connecting with his readers over the shared misery that is the Irish experience. b) He is including a sample from Angela’s Ashes since he knows that not many people will have read it before. c) He is including it because Angela’s Ashes is his favorite book. d) He wants to sample some of McCourt’s best-known work while also giving a portrait of his younger years.