Alice McDermott crafts profound psychological portraits, exploring the lives of women across various social strata. Her prose is renowned for its lyrical quality and keen insight into the nuances of human relationships. McDermott frequently delves into themes of memory, loss, and the search for identity in an ever-changing world. Her works provoke contemplation on the complexities of the human experience and how the past shapes our present.
"In That Night, New York Times bestselling author Alice McDermott "has taken a suburban teenage romance and pregnancy and infused it with the power, the ominousness, and the star-crossed romanticism of a contemporary Romeo and Juliet" (Chicago Tribune)"--
An ordinary life—its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion—lived by an ordinary, but unforgettable woman: This is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott’s extraordinary New York Times bestselling novel. We first glimpse Marie Commeford as a child: a girl in thick glasses observing her pre-Depression world from a Brooklyn stoop. Through her first heartbreak and eventual marriage; her delicate brother’s brief stint as a Catholic priest and his emotional breakdown; her career as a funeral director’s “consoling angel”; the deaths of her parents and the births of her children—we follow Marie through the changing world of the twentieth century and her Irish-American enclave. Rendered with remarkable empathy and insight, Someone is a novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived, with passion and heartbreak, a crowning achievement of one of the finest American writers at work today.
"A riveting account of women's lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award"--
Sipping effortlessly between past and present, between memory and observation, "At Weddings And Wakes" tells the story of three generations of an Irish-Catholic family through the eyes of its younger members. At once a haunting evocation of life's inexplicable calamities and a magical celebration of childhood and familial love, "At Weddings And Wakes" transforms every experience into the heroic and the universal. It is a testament to the remarkable gift of a literary master writing at the peak of her story telling powers.
From National Book Award-winning author Alice McDermott, this is a portrait of the Irish-American experience in the 1940s and 1950s. Set in Catholic Brooklyn, The Ninth Hour is a story of immigrants, societal expectations, suicide, love, and forgiveness. Its a crowning achievement for one of Americas finest literary writers.
Fifteen is a year of clarity; you're still one of the kids, but you're finally beginning to unlock the mysteries of adult behavior. In her luminous novel Child of My Heart , Alice McDermott's narrator is a 15-year-old girl who has two qualities that give her access to the secret lives of adults: she's beautiful, and she looks after their children. Her beauty has already shaped her life. Her parents have moved the family to the east end of Long Island in hopes of finding her a wealthy husband, or at least a fancy crowd to run with. Here she babysits the children of the rich, whose fathers demonstrate their relative decency by making passes at her, or not. The novel spans a dreamy summer as our heroine spends her days with her various charges at the beach, happily leading her crew on home-grown, rather sweet adventures. Among the kids she looks after is a toddler whose father is a famous, aging artist. The narrator's preternatural acuity is apparent in this exchange with a new client: "Mrs. Richardson learned by direct inquiry that I lived in that sweet cottage with the dahlias (interested) and went to the academy (more interested) and babysat for this child of the famous artist (most interested) down the road."
Elizabeth Connelly sits in a New York office that looks like a real editor’s, but isn’t quite. Employed at a vanity press, Elizabeth watches the real world—of real struggles, passion, pain, and love—spin around her. Until one day, a young writer comes to her with a novel about a man who loves more than one woman at once. And suddenly Elizabeth will be awakened from her young urban professional slumber—by a man’s real touch, by a real story in search of an ending, by the unraveling of the greatest masquerade of all—in Alice McDermott’s luminous novel of memory, revelation, and desire.
Billy Lynch's family and friends have gathered to comfort his widow, and to pay their respects to one of the last great romantics. As they trade tales of his famous humor, immense charm, and consuming sorrow, a complex portrait emerges of an enigmatic man, a loyal friend, a beloved husband, an incurable alcoholic. Alice McDermott's striking novel, "Charming Billy," is a study of the lies that bind and the weight of familial love, of the way good intentions can be as destructive as the truth they were meant to hide. "Charming Billy" is the winner of the 1998 National Book Award for Fiction.
A mesmerising portrait of working-class family life in mid-twentieth century America, and a masterful evocation of sibling rivalry in the midst of the Vietnam War and the sexual revolution.
Eine aus dem Blickwinkel dreier Kinder erzählte bitterzarte Familiengeschichte aus Long Island, in deren Mittelpunkt die Romanze ihrer Lieblingstante May, einer ehemaligen Nonne, mit dem Briefträger Fred steht
