Charming Billy

Charming Billy

by Alice Mc Dermott (Author)

Synopsis

The late Billy Lynch's family and friends gather at a small bar and grill in the Bronx to remember better times. His widow, Maeve, is there and everyone admires the way she is holding up, just as they always admired the way she cared for Billy after the alcohol had ruined him. But one cannot think of Billy without saying at some point, 'There was that girl'. On Long Island one summer years ago, Billy fell in love with a beautiful Irish girl working for a wealthy Park Avenue family. Billy wanted to marry Eva, but then she went back to Ireland. And then Billy's cousin Dennis had to break the terrible news: Eva had died of pneumonia. Billy never got over it. Anybody who knew him would tell you so. Billy began courting Maeve not long after, but for the rest of their lives, he, she and Dennis shared a hidden, twisted grief.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Edition: Open market ed
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 20 Jan 2003

ISBN 10: 074756437X
ISBN 13: 9780747564379
Book Overview: Winner of the 1998 National Book Award for Fiction, the top literary prize in the United States, beating Tom Wolfe and Robert Stone

Media Reviews
'McDermott takes on the stereotype she has described as 'the lovable Irish drunk' and turns it inside out...showing that the more familiar a story, the harder its truth is to grasp...A constantly surprising and involving novel' HARPERS & QUEEN 'A masterpiece of subtle, oblique storytelling, in which what's left unsaid resonates as much as what's said' TIME OUT
Author Bio
Alice McDermott is the author of At Weddings and Wakes, a New York Times bestseller; That Night, shortlisted for the National Book Award; and A Bigamist's Daughter. She lives with her family near Washington.