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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:At Weddings and Wakesby Alice McDermott
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments: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. Review:"You'll find yourself reading every word of Alice McDermott's new novel, not because it's complicated but because such wonderful things happen deep inside the sentences." Newsweek Review:
"At Weddings And Wakes transforms every experience into the heroic and the universal. It is a testament to the remarkable gift of a literary master writing at the peak of her story telling powers. A brilliant, highly complex, extraordinary piece of fiction and a triumph for its author." Chicago Tribune Review:"By turns wry and sad, At Weddings and Wakes is McDermott's finest novel to date." Barbara Love, Library Journal Review:"A haunting and masterly work of literary art." Wall Street Journal Review:"A beautifully wrought novel...about all families and all families' encounters with love, morality, and sorrow." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Review:"At Weddings and Wakes immediately sweeps the reader into the numinous world of the Townes....[It] reminded me of Joyce's great story 'The Dead,' with its haunting winter light and landscape, sharp social observation, and tribute to the bittersweet redemptions memory, desire, and longing afford." Paul Baumann, Commonweal Review:"A haunted, troubled, beautifully articulated journey into the past." San Francisco Chronicle Review:"Beautifully written fiction...the structures are complex, slipping from the present, past and to the future and back again like elusive sea nymphs." The Washington Post Review:"McDermott can make sadness exhilarating; she can make goodness as irresistable as venial sin. The detail in At Weddings and Wakes is not painstaking but hallowing; as if specific descriptions were the wards of a key and lock that, fitted exactly, open the door to the perilous magic of the past." Los Angeles Times Review:"Brilliant...McDermott has fashioned a spare, delicate, and luminous gem....Tender and true, this novel is also technically stunning." The Plain Dealer Review:"Vividly evoked...With her third novel, McDermott secures her reputation as a mesmerizing and innovative storyteller." Time Review:"Ms. McDermott has taught us to expect something extraordinary...her sentences have a harmony all their own — grave, decorous, moving." The New York Times Book Review Review:"Remarkable...McDermott plots the touching dignity of ordinary lives pursued on the crest of inevitable sadness...In translucent prose with rich recognitions, a fine novel of vigorous wisdom and heartbreaking humanity." Kirkus Reviews Review:"Beautiful....Writing in an elliptical, almost languid prose, and telling her story with detachment and classic literary grace, McDermott is at the top of her artistry here." Entertainment Weekly Synopsis:Slipping effortlessly between past and present, between memory and observation, Alice McDermott's critically acclaimed "At Weddings and Wakes" tells the story of three generations of an Irish-Catholic family through the eyes of its youngest members. 288 pp. 17,500 print. 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. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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