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At Weddings and Wakes

At Weddings and Wakes

by Alice Mc Dermott (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2003

    $6.71

  • Used

    Paperback 1998

    $3.25
Synopsis

Twice a week, Lucy Dailey leaves suburbia with her three children in tow, returning to the Brooklyn home where she grew up, and where her stepmother and unmarried sisters still live. Aunt Veronica, with her wounded face and dreams of beauty, drowns her sorrows in drink. Aunt Agnes, an acerbic student of elegance, sips only from the finest crystal as she sees Aunt May, the ex-nun, blossom with a late and unexpected love. And all the while, the children watch, absorbing the legacy of their haunted family. At once a moving evocation of life's inexplicable calamities and a magical celebration of childhood and familial love, AT WEDDINGS AND WAKES is the story of three generations of an Irish-American family through the eyes of its youngest members. With eloquence and grace, master storyteller Alice McDermott transforms everyday experience into the heroic and universal.

$6.71

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 224
 Edition: New
 Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 05 May 2003
ISBN 10: 0747563942
ISBN 13: 9780747563945
Book Overview: First UK publication in paperback to tie in with Alice McDermott's wonderful new novel CHILD OF MY HEART. Bloomsbury also publishes CHARMING BILLY in paperback. 'A beautifully wrought novel about all families and all families' encounters with love, morality, and sorrow' Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times 'A haunted, troubled, beautifully articulated journey into the past' San Francisco Chronicle

Media Reviews
As rendered through Ms. McDermott's rich, supple prose, and infused with her quiet emotional wisdom, the story of these three children and their family assumes a kind of mythic resonance: it becomes a parable about all families and all families' encounters with love, mortality, and sorrow. -- The New York Times A brilliant, highly complex, extraordinary piece of fiction and a triumph for its author. -- Chicago Tribune McDermott's novels can't be relegated to plot or thematic conceit. It is the sweep of her sentences, many of them as luxurious and sure of themselves as a cat stretching in the sun. And it is the remarkable microscopic attention to humanity--the private gestures and telltale routines that make us who we are. -- The Boston Sunday Globe
Author Bio
Alice McDermott is the author of A BIGAMIST'S DAUGHTER, THAT NIGHT, AT WEDDINGS AND WAKES, and CHARMING BILLY. She lives with her family outside Washington, D.C.