Charming Billy: A Novel
Nov 2009 · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
3.7star
3 reviewsreport
Ebook
280
Pages
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About this ebook
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.
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.
Ratings and reviews
3.7
3 reviews
About the author
Alice McDermott is the author of The Ninth Hour, That Night, After This, and At Weddings and Wakes. That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She is the Richard A. Macksey Professor for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University.
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