Charming Billy by Alice McDermott

BUY IT NEW

  • Limited Time Offer! Everyone receives the Member Price on books.
    See Details
  • This item is currently out of stock.
  • Add To List uiAction=GetAllLists&page=List&pageType=list&ean=9780385333344&productCode=BK&maxCount=100&threshold=3

BUY IT USED

581 copies from $1.99

See All Available

Pick Me Up

Reserve it at BN.com & pick it up in 60 minutes at your local store.

Enter a zip code

(Paperback)

  • Pub. Date: January 1999
  • 256pp
    More Formats 
    Paperback$11.20
    Buy it Used: 581 copies from $1.99 See All Available

    Customers who bought this also bought

     
    • Overview
    • Editorial Reviews
    • Customer Reviews
    • Meet the Writer
    • Features

    Product Details

    • Pub. Date: January 1999
    • Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
    • Format: Paperback, 256pp

    Synopsis

    Resonant with the voices of its voluble, bereaved characters and fueled by the twin engines of nostalgia and lost love, Alice McDermott's National Book Award-winning Charming Billy is the story of the life and tragic death of the much-loved Billy Lynch. At the heart of McDermott's novel is the revelation that the torch Billy carried for his long-dead love is predicated upon a lie: Eva, the Irish girl Billy loved in his youth and long believed dead, is actually alive, married, and living in Ireland. (Unable to tell Billy that Eva had left him for another man, his cousin Dennis instead invented the face-saving story of her untimely death.)

    Thus the central debate of the novel is set in motion: Was it the knowledge of Eva's betrayal or the discovery of Dennis's 30-year-old lie that killed Billy? Or was his death simply due to a genetic weakness for alcohol? Whatever the reason, observes Dennis's daughter (the narrator of the novel), of one thing there is no doubt: Billy had "ripped apart, plowed through, as alcoholics tend to do, the great deep, tightly woven fabric of affection that was some part of the emotional life, the life of love, of everyone in the room." Fierce, witty, and haunting, Alice McDermott's poignant evocation of postwar Irish American immigrant life is a masterpiece about the unbreakable bonds of memory and desire.

    Annotation

    Winner of the 1998 National Book Award

    <br>&#151 San Francisco Chronicle - Rox Spafford

    Exquisitely presented...Alice McDermott's novels are like family albums, each scene hazy with yellow light of history, nostalgic as faded Polaroids.

    More Reviews and Recommendations

    Biography

    Alice McDermott has a relatively young but already illustrious career: In the space of four slim novels, she has earned two Pulitzer nominations and a National Book Award win for 1998's Charming Billy. She mostly has drawn on her background growing up Irish-American on Long Island to create compelling family portraits, but she is also an author worth watching for the turns she'll take in the future.

    More About the Author

    Customer Reviews

    Brilliantby Anonymous

    Reader Rating:
    See Detailed Ratings

    December 01, 2004: I have read Charming Billy twice and always try to persuade people to read it. The opening pages got me. I knew these people. I know a Billy and the rest of the characters. I have been to the funeral lunch. The descriptions is this book were beautifully crafted. It was written with compassion for human faults, forgiveness, denial and of course, love.

    Compelling and thought provokingby Anonymous

    Reader Rating:
    See Detailed Ratings

    February 20, 2004: I read this book in college as part of a contemporary American literature class. It was one of the most engaging and thought provoking books I read that semester, and it?s become one of my favorites. I highly recommend this book, but it isn't for those looking for a quick story or a fast-paced adventure. It is a story of themes and relationships, not action. Reading Charming Billy is like flipping through the pages of a family photo album. But the pictures seem to be out of order. The novel begins with a gathering of family and friends. They meet in a small restaurant in the Bronx for a luncheon following Billy Lynch?s funeral. The author guides the reader from group to group, and the reader catches small bits of different conversations. The following chapters fill in the gaps left in the conversations. The story is, however, disjointed, meandering from the forties to the seventies and back to the sixties. It is as if the pictures fell out of the photo album and were replaced carelessly out of order. To compound this difficulty, the narration itself can be confusing. Sometimes the narrator seems to be merely recounting the story, but sometimes she seems to be addressing an unnamed person. Sometimes she refers to her father by his first name and sometimes as ?my father.? This leaves the reader feeling very disconnected. (This is fitting since connection is a dominant theme in the novel). The reader struggles to keep characters and family relationships straight and to make meaning, groping through chapter after disconnected chapter until all the pieces fall into place, and the whole picture is revealed. Throughout the novel, McDermott raises issues related to love, faith, truth, and connection. The threads the author slowly weaves together are a re-creation of Billy?s life and a contemplation of his unwavering faith. The reader is compelled to question this faith again and again. Perhaps faith, love, and even heaven are all merely constructions, ?well intentioned deceptions? meant to ease the pain of living (p. 211). After the uncertainty and disconnection of the entire novel, the final chapter focuses on what is constant, the things one is surrounded by that ?ride out time? (p. 237). To achieve this effect, McDermott describes the summerhouse on Long Island in Polaroid detail. In this feeling of consistency and connection, the reader is invited to draw his or her own conclusions about faith, love, and connection, but of course, the author concludes her story with a question and not answer, leaving the reader not quite satisfied and unable to quickly forget the issues raised by the novel.


    More Customer Reviews