Alice McDermott--winner of the National Book Award, American Book
Award, and Whiting Award, and three-time finalist for the Pulitzer
Prize--recently published her eighth novel, The Ninth Hour, to
great critical and popular acclaim. Her previous books, including
Charming Billy, At Weddings and Wakes, and That Night, have been
lauded as crowning achievements of Irish American fiction. An Irish
American Catholic born and raised in New York, McDermott uses
multiple identities and a distinctive, nonchronological narrative
style to create an unmistakable trademark. She currently serves as
the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins
University. Understanding Alice McDermott begins with a brief
biography and transitions into a linear inquiry of McDermott's
published works. In addition to interrogating her recurring motifs
of memory and heritage, Margaret Hallissy tracks various themes
that appear throughout the novels--religion, generational trauma,
geography, family, motherhood, and displacement--topics that
intertwine and inform the mentality of McDermott's characters. This
volume deftly leads the reader through each of McDermott's novels,
seeking connections and facilitating conversations among her
earliest and most recent works. Hallissy demonstrates a deep
critical understanding of intersections in McDermott's canon. Her
characters in some ways are beleaguered by society's perception of
them--uneducated, lower-middle-class immigrants or children of
immigrants--but are also positively defined by their collective
dream of a lost homeland and the shared hardship of motherhood. By
tracing the shifting themes and motifs through eight novels,
uncollected short stories, and essays published during McDermott's
fruitful career, Understanding Alice McDermott provides a window
into the decades-long development of a contemporary master.
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