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Alice McDermott

    June 27, 1953

    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.

    The Ninth Hour
    BIGAMIST'S DAUGHTER
    Charming Billy. Irischer Abschied, englische Ausgabe
    At Weddings and Wakes
    Someone
    That Night
    • 2023

      * THE TOP 10 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * 'One of the finest contemporary novels I've read ... A moral masterpiece' ANN PATCHETT 'Her writing has a luminous kind of clarity, a grace and scope that fills me with wonder' RACHEL JOYCE 'Damning and dazzling ... The story of a Vietnam we never got in history class' OPRAH DAILY ----------------- You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives. 1963. Saigon. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney working for US Navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. The two women form a wary alliance as they struggle to balance the pressure to be respectable wives for their ambitious husbands, with their own dubious impulses to "do good" for the people of Vietnam. Sixty years later, Charlene's daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam veteran, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, discovering how their lives as women on the periphery -- of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands' convictions -- have been shaped and burdened by the unintended consequences of America's tragic interference in Southeast Asia. Exploring the disaster of the Vietnam War through the lives built by American wives in 1960s Saigon, this is a virtuosic novel about folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice and the quest for absolution in a broken world.

      Absolution
    • 2021

      The collection features insightful essays, lectures, and observations from acclaimed author Alice McDermott, celebrated for her mastery of language and imagery. Through her reflections on the craft of writing fiction, McDermott shares her unique perspective on storytelling, exploring the nuances of character development and narrative structure. This work offers both aspiring writers and literature enthusiasts a deeper understanding of the artistry involved in creating compelling fiction.

      What about the Baby?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction
    • 2017

      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)

      The Ninth Hour
    • 2014

      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.

      Charming Billy. Irischer Abschied, englische Ausgabe
    • 2013

      Someone

      • 240 pages
      • 9 hours of reading
      3.8(262)Add rating

      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.

      Someone
    • 2012

      BIGAMIST'S DAUGHTER

      • 306 pages
      • 11 hours of reading
      3.3(21)Add rating

      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).

      BIGAMIST'S DAUGHTER
    • 2009

      "Pulitzer Prize finalist At Weddings and Wakes is "a brilliant, highly complex, extraordinary piece of fiction" (Chicago Tribune)"-- Provided by publisher

      At Weddings and Wakes
    • 2006

      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.

      After This
    • 2005

      "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)"--

      That Night
    • 2003

      Child of My Heart

      • 256 pages
      • 9 hours of reading
      3.6(2809)Add rating

      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.

      Child of My Heart