Alice McDermott

A magnificent new novel from one of America’s finest writers—a powerfully affecting story spanning the twentieth century of a widow and her daughter and the nuns who serve their Irish-American community in Brooklyn. On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove—to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his badgering, pregnant wife—“that the hours of his life belong to himself alone.” In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Savior, an aging nun appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child. We begin deep inside Catholic Brooklyn, in the early part of the twentieth century. Decorum, superstition, and shame collude to erase the man’s brief existence. Yet his suicide, although never spoken of, reverberates through many lives and over the decades testing the limits and the demands of love and sacrifice, of forgiveness and forgetfulness, even through multiple generations. The characters we meet, from Sally, the unborn baby at the beginning of the novel, who becomes the center of the story to the nuns whose personalities we come to know and love to the neighborhood families with whose lives they are entwined, are all rendered with extraordinary sympathy and McDermott’s trademark lucidity and intelligence. Alice McDermott’s The Ninth Hour is a crowning achievement by one of the premiere writers at work in America today.

A Novel

The Ninth Hour

"The story of a Brooklyn-born woman's life - her family, her neighborhood, her daily trials and triumphs - from childhood to old age"--Provided by the publisher.

Someone

A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award. You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives. American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own, inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam. Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking wry account of that pivotal year and of Charlene’s altruistic machinations, and discovering as they do how their own lives as women on the periphery—of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands’ convictions—have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia. A virtuosic new novel from Alice McDermott, one of our most observant, most affecting writers—about folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice, and, finally, the quest for absolution in a broken world.

Absolution

" Billy Lynch est mort. Bonne raison pour ses proches d'évoquer ce personnage du Bronx, truculent, adoré de tous et assez alcoolique. Très vite, dans la conversation, on va parler de la petite Irlandaise qu'il aurait aimée toute sa vie. Elle est venue à New York, il l'a aimée, l'a demandée en mariage, lui a envoyé une bague et un billet d'avion. Et elle est morte. En Irlande. En tout cas, c'est ce qu'on lui a dit. S'est-il remis de cette tragédie ? demandent les amis à voix basse, car sa veuve est là, une femme formidable qui l'a aimé tel qu'il était, qui l'a supporté comme elle supportait son père, le marchand de chaussures. Et voilà que ça se met à danser, tous ces personnages, ce petit peuple d'émigrés irlandais, avec leurs traditions, leurs exagérations, leurs rigolades. On est embringué dans leur histoire, on s'installe, on les écoute et on regrette une seule chose: ne pas avoir connu Billy, un homme si charming. " Marie-Françoise Lepoutre, Marie France.

Charming Billy

Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction

What About the Baby?

Child of My Heart

A moving evocation of life's inexplicable calamities and also a magical celebration of childhood and the bonds of family, At Weddings and Wakes is the story of three generations of an Irish-American family through the eyes of its youngest members

At Weddings and Wakes

A portrait of an American family during the middle decades of the twentieth century evokes the social, spiritual, and political turmoil of the era as seen through the experiences of a middle-class couple and their children.

After this

Post

Una cosa difficile come l'amore

On a warm suburban night, the sound of lawn sprinklers is drowned out by the rumble of hot rods. Suddenly a car careens onto a family’s neat front yard, teenage boys spill out brandishing chains and leather, and a young man cries out for the girl he loves. Tonight fathers will pick up snow shovels and rakes to defend their turf, and children will witness a battle fueled by fierce, true love. This is the night they will talk about and remember as the moment everything changed forever.

That Night

William E. Cain

Lance Newman

Hilary E. Wyss

ALERT: Before you purchase, check with your instructor or review your course syllabus to ensure that you select the correct ISBN. Several versions of Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products exist for each title, including customized versions for individual schools, and registrations are not transferable. In addition, you may need a CourseID, provided by your instructor, to register for and use Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products. Packages Access codes for Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products may not be included when purchasing or renting from companies other than Pearson; check with the seller before completing your purchase. Used or rental books If you rent or purchase a used book with an access code, the access code may have been redeemed previously and you may have to purchase a new access code. Access codes Access codes that are purchased from sellers other than Pearson carry a higher risk of being either the wrong ISBN or a previously redeemed code. Check with the seller prior to purchase. -- As part of the Penguin Academics series, American Literature Volume 1, offers a wide range of selections (with minimal editorial apparatus) at an affordable price. This new edition of American Literature presents an exciting opportunity for readers. Many of the pieces will be familiar to readers of American literature, but we have also taken steps to include selections that are not as well known and just as compelling. Making this new edition even more attractive are six thematic clusters of excerpts from documents illustrating key trends in American social and literary history; a richer selection of images; and a new page design to enhance the reading experience. 0321916697 / 9780321916693 American Literature, Volume 1 (Penguin Academics Series) Plus NEW MyLiteratureLab -- Access Card Package Package consists of 0205883583 / 9780205883585 NEW MyLiteratureLab -- Valuepack Access Card 0321838645 / 9780321838643 American Literature, Volume I (Penguin Academics Series)

American Literature

Roman

Die Hochzeit der Nonne

Il nostro caro Billy

Uma vida: suas dores devastadoras e suas alegrias inesperadas; suas rajadas de brilhante clareza e seus momentos de profunda confusão. Esse é o tema de Alguém para amar, extraordinário novo romance de Alice McDermott, após um hiato de sete anos. Lembranças dispersas — de uma infância curiosa, das descobertas sexuais na adolescência, da maternidade, e, finalmente, da velhice — se reúnem nesta história inesquecível que retrata uma mulher admirável, mas que, ao mesmo tempo, poderia ser nossa mãe, nossa amiga, nossa vizinha ou até nós mesmos. Logo nas primeiras páginas somos apresentados à Marie Commeford ainda criança: uma menina com óculos de lentes grossas, que observa uma Nova York pré-Depressão da varanda de sua casa no Brooklyn. A partir daí, Marie conta sua própria história e relembra momentos marcantes, como sua primeira desilusão amorosa e o trabalho como “anjo consolador” de uma funerária; o breve e delicado período em que seu irmão se dedicou ao sacerdócio; seu casamento feliz e o nascimento dos filhos. A deterioração urbana que destrói o bairro de imigrantes irlandeses de sua infância é paralela à deterioração da saúde de sua mãe e da sanidade de seu irmão. Os gestos de sua jovem vida reverberam nas tristezas e nos triunfos da velhice. Alguém para amar é um romance totalmente original que fala sobre as grandes verdades da vida à medida que os dias passam, tão únicos quanto inexoráveis. A magia da história composta por Alice McDermott reside na forma como os eventos narrados com destreza, emoção e um humor refinado refletem nossas próprias lembranças e experiências, compondo um retrato universal de diferentes mulheres, em diferentes épocas e lugares que espelham as emoções, os percalços, as perdas e as alegrias vividas por Marie ao longo do século XX. Alguém para amar marca a consagração definitiva de uma das maiores escritoras americanas da atualidade.

Alguém para amar

Ninth Hour

Elizabeth Connelly sits in a New York office that looks like a real editor's, but isn't quite. Employed at a vanity press, Elizabeth watches the real world - of real struggles, passion, pain and love - spin around her. Until one day, a young writer comes to her with a novel about a man who loves more than one woman at once. And suddenly Elizabeth will be awakened from her young urban professional slumber - by a man's real touch and by a real story in search of an ending. This is a luminous novel of memory, revelation and desire.

A Bigamist's Daughter

ALERT: Before you purchase, check with your instructor or review your course syllabus to ensure that you select the correct ISBN. Several versions of Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products exist for each title, including customized versions for individual schools, and registrations are not transferable. In addition, you may need a CourseID, provided by your instructor, to register for and use Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products. Packages Access codes for Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products may not be included when purchasing or renting from companies other than Pearson; check with the seller before completing your purchase. Used or rental books If you rent or purchase a used book with an access code, the access code may have been redeemed previously and you may have to purchase a new access code. Access codes Access codes that are purchased from sellers other than Pearson carry a higher risk of being either the wrong ISBN or a previously redeemed code. Check with the seller prior to purchase. -- As part of the Penguin Academics series, American Literature Volume 2, offers a wide range of selections (with minimal editorial apparatus) at an affordable price. This new edition of American Literature presents an exciting opportunity for readers. Many of the pieces will be familiar to readers of American literature, but we have also taken steps to include selections that are not as well known and just as compelling. Making this new edition even more attractive are six thematic clusters of excerpts from documents illustrating key trends in American social and literary history; a richer selection of images; and a new page design to enhance the reading experience. 0321924975 / 9780321924971 American Literature, Volume II (Penguin Academics Series) with NEW MyLiteratureLab -- Access Card Package Package consists of: 0205883583 / 9780205883585 NEW MyLiteratureLab -- Valuepack Access Card 0321838637 / 9780321838636 American Literature, Volume II (Penguin Academics Series)

American Literature + New Myliteraturelab With Etext

As part of the Penguin Academics series, American Literature Volume 2, offers a wide range of selections (with minimal editorial apparatus) at an affordable price. This new edition of American Literature presents an exciting opportunity for readers. Many of the pieces will be familiar to readers of American literature, but we have also taken steps to include selections that are not as well known and just as compelling. Making this new edition even more attractive are six thematic clusters of excerpts from documents illustrating key trends in American social and literary history; a richer selection of images; and a new page design to enhance the reading experience.

Alice McDermott

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