McDermott, Alice. At Weddings and Wakes. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992.
Reason read: June is a very popular month for weddings…to the point where it is almost cliché.
Time is handled in a “This Is Us” fashion: time goes backwards and forwards in At Weddings and Wakes. Time moves through memory and observation and seems incrementally slow. This is the story of what it means to be Irish-American in New York, told from the point of view of Lucy Dailey’s school-aged children. Again, I was reminded of “This Is Us.” The viewpoints are poignant and sad, tender and true to life. This Is Life. Lucy dutifully brings her children from Long Island to see her sisters and stepmother in Brooklyn. The three generations of family all have a rich bittersweet history to tell. Aunt Veronica needs alcohol to numb her grief. Aunt Agnes is nothing but sharp-tongued and career driven. But, the sweetness and light is found with Aunt May, a former nun in the midst of a romance with mailman.
McDermott is a master at displaying human emotions and behaviors in a way that you swear the characters are in your life; just ghosts who have just passed into another room while you weren’t looking.
As an aside, can I just say how much I love the slug scene that appears in the beginning of the book and then returns at the end?
Line I liked, “She inherited her mother’s easy access to regret” (p 52) and “The need to disagree rose in her like appetite” (p 87).
Author fact: I am reading five McDermott books. I cannot wait for That Night and Child of My Heart. I have already read Charming Billy and The Bigamist’s Daughter .
Book trivia: this should have been a movie.
Setlist: “All the Things You Are” by Jerome Kern, “Wild Irish Rose”, “I’ll Be Seeing You”, “I’ve Been Working On the Railroad”, “Rambling Wreck From Georgia Tech”, and “The Caissons Go Rolling Along”.
Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about At Weddings and Wakes.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “A…is for Alice (p 1).
~*LunaSea*~ 