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)"--
The National Book Award-winning author chronicles the ordinary life of a woman named Marie, from her childhood to old age, as she experiences the changing world of her Irish-American enclave in Brooklyn, in this novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived.
"Pulitzer Prize finalist At Weddings and Wakes is "a brilliant, highly complex, extraordinary piece of fiction" (Chicago Tribune)"-- Provided by publisher
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.
The New York Times Bestselling Author of After This and Charming Billy Elizabeth Connelly, editor at a New York vanity press, sells the dream of publication (admittedly, to writers of questionable talent). Stories of true emotional depth rarely cross her desk. But when a young writer named Tupper Daniels walks in, bearing an unfinished novel, Elizabeth is drawn to both the novelist and his story-a lyrical tale about a man in love with more than one woman at once. Tupper's manuscript unlocks memories of her own secretive father, who himself may have been a bigamist. As Elizabeth and Tupper search for the perfect dénouement, their affair, too, approaches a most unexpected and poignant coda. A brilliant debut from one of our most celebrated authors, A Bigamist's Daughter is "a wise, sad, witty novel about men and women, God, hope, love, illusion, and fiction itself" (Newsweek).
New; pristine. See scans and description. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2017. The issued-signed edition, with its own ISBN 9780374904043 (see rear jacket panel scan), as well as the First Edition / First Printing ISBN 9780374280147 (see copyright page scan), of National Book Award winner Alice McDermott's 2017 title, The Ninth Hour. Octavo, illustrated jacket, very light gray boards, black spine imprinting, 247 pp. New, in sealed storage since purchase; on premises. See scans. Ships in a new, sturdy, protective box - not a bag. L71 (Signed Edition. Two ISBNs: Signed Ed. ISBN 9780374904043 & 1st/1st Printing ISBN 9780374280147)
In Alice McDermott's first work of fiction since her best-selling, National Book Award-winning Charming Billy, a woman recalls her fifteenth summer with the wry and bittersweet wisdom of hindsight. The beautiful child of older parents, raised on the eastern end of Long Island, Theresa is her town's most sought-after babysitter--cheerful, poised, an effortless storyteller, a wonder with children and animals. Among her charges this fateful summer is Daisy, her younger cousin, who has come to spend a few quiet weeks in this bucolic place. While Theresa copes with the challenge presented by the neighborhood's waiflike children, the tumultuous households of her employers, the attentions of an aging painter, and Daisy's fragility of body and spirit, her precocious, tongue-in-check sense of order is tested as she makes the perilous crossing into adulthood. In her deeply etched rendering of all that happened that seemingly idyllic season, McDermott once again peers into the depths of everyday life with inimitable insight and grace.
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.
