Alice McDermott – Cannonball Read 17

“Inconsequential Good”

Absolution by Alice McDermott

October 1, 2024 by Sophia Leave a Comment

Absolution (2023) by Alice McDermott was one of the books I picked out from NPR’s Favorite Books last year. I saw that it was about American women in Vietnam at the beginning of the Vietnam War, and figured it might be interesting. My father fought in Vietnam, but I know very little about it. The war in Vietnam felt like one of those subjects we practically skipped over at the end of U.S. History in high school, and my father rarely talked about it. The beginning of this […]

So I guess I panicked from the word go.

October 25, 2018 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

The Bus on Thursday – 4/5 Stars This was an audiobook and I hadn’t heard of it before I looked a little into and downloaded it from Overdrive. Also, had this not been Australian I might not have listened to it, and had I read the back I wouldn’t either. I also almost turned it off early on because of a kind of off-key line that I didn’t like. But something clicked in my experience at some point and I ended up really liking it. […]

Now and at the hour of our death …

January 18, 2018 by ElCicco Leave a Comment

The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott is a delight to read. McDermott’s writing is warm and evocative, featuring vivid, relatable characters and spaces in which one longs to linger. Brooklyn and the Catholic Church of the 1920s come alive through her novel. At the same time, McDermott uses these very real people and the situations they face to challenge the reader to think about life, death, suffering and redemption. McDermott presents us with a world that we see almost exclusively from the perspective of women […]

Relatively Charming

May 14, 2016 by Lynn Leave a Comment

Charming Billy is a quiet little novel that takes place over the course of one day at Billy Lynch’s wake. Our narrator is the adult daughter of Billy’s best friend Dennis, and she is telling the story to her husband, who isn’t at the funeral. It’s an unusual narration, and one that took me quite awhile to figure out, but it works within the context of the story. The story begins at a bar after the funeral, where approximately fifty mourners have gathered to eat […]

Someone: A Novel by Alice McDermott

January 24, 2014 by ElCicco 2 Comments

It’s hard to give a plot summary for this novel because I’m not sure there is a clear plot line. The narrator Marie gives us her life story, an ordinary life with love and loss, births and deaths, set in Brooklyn from her 1920s’ girlhood through WWII, then marriage and family. It’s about what happens to her, her neighbors, her parents and brother. These are ordinary lives but no life is really just ordinary. There’s always more to people than you realize. McDermott’s writing is […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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