McDermott Alice Livres

Jim, jeune homme aux grands yeux bleus qui a dû mal à se lever le matin, vient d'être congédié de son emploi aux chemins de fer. Il referme la porte derrière sa femme Annie qu'il a envoyée faire des courses, puis enroule soigneusement son pardessus "dans le sens de la longueur" pour le poser au pied de la porte. Quand Annie reviendra, elle manquera de faire sauter la maison entière en craquant une allumette dans l'appartement rempli de gaz. Malgré la fatigue et ses chevilles enflées, Soeur Saint-Sauveur, en chemin vers le couvent voisin après une journée à faire l'aumône, prend la relève des pompiers auprès de la jeune femme enceinte et des voisins sinistrés de ce petit immeuble de Brooklyn. Elle tente de faire jouer ses relations pour que Jim soit enterré dans le cimetière catholique où le couple avait acheté une concession, mais la nouvelle du suicide est déjà parue dans le journal. Il lui reste à veiller son corps, en compagnie de l'acariâtre Soeur Lucy et de la novice Soeur Jeanne, en attendant que le croque-mort l'emporte à la fosse commune...

"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).

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.