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Alice McDermott

Biography

Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott is the author of nine novels, including CHARMING BILLY, winner of the National Book Award, and THAT NIGHT, AT WEDDINGS AND WAKES, and AFTER THIS, which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of the essay collection WHAT ABOUT THE BABY?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine and other publications. She lives outside Washington, DC.

Alice McDermott

Books by Alice McDermott

by Alice McDermott - Fiction

THE NINTH HOUR is a magnificent new novel from one of America’s finest writers --- a powerfully affecting story spanning the 20th century of a widow and her daughter and the nuns who serve their Irish-American community in Brooklyn.

by Alice McDermott - Fiction

We first glimpse Marie Commeford as a child: a girl in thick glasses observing her pre-Depression world from a Brooklyn stoop. Through her first heartbreak and eventual marriage; her delicate brother’s brief stint as a Catholic priest and his emotional breakdown; her career as a funeral director’s “consoling angel”; the deaths of her parents and the births of her children --- we follow Marie through the changing world of the 20th century and her Irish-American enclave.

by Alice McDermott

Billy Lynch's family and friends have gathered at a small Bronx bar. They have come to comfort his widow and to eulogize one of the last great romantics, trading tales of his famous humor, immense charm, and unfathomable sorrow. As they linger on into this extraordinary night, their voices form Billy's tragic story and their mourning becomes a gentle homage to all the lives in their small community fractured by grief, shattered by secrets, and sustained by the simple dream of love.