At Weddings and Wakes: A Novel - Softcover

McDermott, Alice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312429436 ISBN 13: 9780312429430

Publisher: Picador, 2009

Synopsis

Lucy Dailey leaves suburbia twice a week with her three children in tow, returning to the Brooklyn home where she grew up, and where her stepmother and unmarried sisters still live. The children quietly observe Aunt Veronica, who drowns her sorrows in drink. Aunt Agnes, a caustic career woman, and finally Aunt May, the ex-nun, blossoming with a late and unexpected love, dutifully absorbing the legacy of their less-than-perfect family. Alice McDermott beautifully evokes three generations of an Irish-American family in this "haunting and masterly work of literary art" (The Wall Street Journal).

About this title

Review:

Telling a story through the eyes of children is a tricky business, which is that much more proof of what a magician Alice McDermott happens to be. At Weddings and Wakes, her engrossing portrayal of love and tragedy in an Irish-Catholic family, takes us along with the kids as they accompany their mother on weekly visits to a world of memory and recrimination in the family's old Brooklyn neighborhood. An exquisitely executed little novel that masks all its hard work and complex structure behind finely wrought lace curtains of craft.

From the Publisher:

"A haunted, troubled, beautifully articulated journey into the past."--San Francisco Chronicle.

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.

"It's hard to lift your eyes at the end of the book... you'll find yourself reading every word of Alice McDermott's new novel, not because it's complicated but because such wonderful things happen deep inside the senteces."--Newsweek.

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.

"A brilliant, highly complex, extraordinary piece of fiction and a triumph for its author."--Chicago Tribune.

"A haunting and masterly work of literary art."--The Wall Street Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0312429436
• ISBN 13: 9780312429430
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224