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Winner of the National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller, Charming Billy is "Alice McDermott's masterpiece" (NPR).
In a small bar somewhere in the Bronx, a funeral party has gathered to honor Billy Lynch. 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. 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. Who is truly responsible for Billy's life and death, and what does it mean to mythologize a friend's suffering?
Beautifully 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.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Alice McDermott is the author of nine novels, all published by FSG, 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.
