![]() ![]() Alice McDermotts striking novel, Charming Billy, is a study of. Who is truly responsible for Billy’s life and death, and what does it mean to mythologize a friend’s suffering?īeautifully written and teeming with fine portraits of Irish-American life in New York, Charming Billy is Alice McDermott’s masterful and beloved novel about how a community can pin its dreams to one man, and how good intentions can be as destructive as the truth they were meant to hide. Charming Billy Charming Billy is the winner of the 1998 National Book Award for Fiction. As they comfort his widow, the gentle Maeve, they remember as well his first love, Eva, who died of pneumonia, and whose ghost haunted his marriage and drove him to the bottle. Through the night, his friends and family will weave together the tale of a husband, lover, dreamer, and storyteller, but also that of a hopeless drunk whose immense charm was but a veil over a lifetime of secrets and all-consuming sorrow. ![]() In a small bar somewhere in the Bronx, a funeral party has gathered to honor Billy Lynch. She has brought together three generations of a working-class Irish American family whose members deal with the problems that. Winner of the National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller, Charming Billy is “Alice McDermott’s masterpiece” (NPR). Alice McDermott has crafted a marvelous story in CHARMING BILLY. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |