SOMEONE by Alice McDermott

Finished Mo 12/9/19

This is a hardback that I ordered from Amazon on Mo 8/27/19. I got it because I really enjoyed her book , 'THE NINTH HOUR' which was a selection by the Contemporary Book Club.

This book was a "slow burning tour de force".
A strange story-line, but the character development was almost magical.

Basically the story of Marie, an Irish Catholic woman who lives in Brooklyn, NY during the early to late 20th century.

They live in a brownstone next to The Chehab's. A couple from Syria. Their daughter Pegeen who falls down the stairs and dies. This is how the novel begins. Marie's mother thinks that the couple, woman from Ireland and father from Syria, is very romantic.

Bill Corrigan is a veteran of WWII who lost most of his sight during the war. He is always dressed in a business suit and sits out on the sidewalk and is the umpire for the kids stick-ball games.

Gabe is Marie's older brother. He is studying for the priesthood. At the last moment, he decides it is not his vocation. He is probably a closeted gay man.

Dora Ryan is a woman who marries another woman. She thought that she was a man. This occurs when Marie is still a young girl and it leaves a lasting impression.

Gerty is Marie's closest childhood friend.

The link to the book's page at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Someone_(McDermott_novel)

The Kirkus review online:

"McDermott’s brief seventh novel (Child of My Heart, 2002, etc.) follows seven decades of a Brooklyn woman’s modest life to create one of the author’s most trenchant explorations into the heart and soul of the 20th-century Irish-American family.

Sitting on the stoop of her apartment building, 7-year-old Marie watches her 1920s Brooklyn neighborhood through the thick glasses she already wears—her ability to see or missee those around her is one of the novel’s overriding metaphors. She revels in the stories of her neighbors, from the tragedy of Billy Corrigan, blinded in the war, to the great romance of the Chebabs’ Syrian-Irish marriage. Affectionately nicknamed the “little pagan” in contrast to her studious, spiritual older brother Gabe, Marie feels secure and loved within her own family despite her occasional battles of will against her mother. Cozy in their narrow apartment, her parents are proud that Marie’s father has a white-collar job as a clerk, and they have great hopes for Gabe, who is soon off to seminary to study for the priesthood. Marie’s Edenic childhood shatters when her adored father dies. In fact, death is never far from the surface of these lives, particularly since Maries works as a young woman with the local undertaker, a job that affords many more glimpses into her neighbors and more storytelling. By then, Gabe has left the priesthood, claiming it didn’t suit him and that his widowed mother needs him at home. Is he a failure or a quiet saint? After her heart is broken by a local boy who dumps her for a richer girl, Marie marries one of Gabe’s former parishioners, has children and eventually moves away from the neighborhood. Gabe remains. Marie’s straightforward narration is interrupted with occasional jumps back and forward in time that create both a sense of foreboding and continuity as well as a meditation on the nature of sorrow.

There is no high drama here, but Marie and Gabe are compelling in their basic goodness, as is McDermott’s elegy to a vanished world".

The fact that Marie finds a job at a local funeral parlor keeps death always in the focus of the novel.

Her boss at the funeral home is Mr. Fagin and he is a fan of Charles Dickens.

Marie is asked to marry a man that she barely knows, Walter Hartnett. The scene were he sucks on one of her breasts is an odd and strange high-point in the novel. He drops her almost without warning and merely for a woman who has more money and is better looking. He lays this out as if Marie would immediately agree.

Much later, Walter comes to the funeral home to pay respects to one of their friends and he is alcoholic and not very happy. But, obviously these two had no future.

Marie meets a friend of Gabe's and marries him. Tom didn't realize that Gabe was no longer a priest. Tom works at a brewery....beer and bier...

I loved the book and although the plot is really not as important as the rich character development.

The write up in GoodReads:

"An ordinary life - its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion - lived by an ordinary woman: This is a novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived, a crowning achievement by one of the finest American writers at work today.

An ordinary life - its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion - lived by an ordinary woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott's extraordinary return, seven years after the publication of After This. Scattered recollections - of childhood, adolescence, motherhood, old age - come together in this transformative narrative, stitched into a vibrant whole by McDermott's deft, lyrical voice.

Our first glimpse of Marie is as a child: a girl in glasses waiting on a Brooklyn stoop for her beloved father to come home from work. A seemingly innocuous encounter with a young woman named Pegeen sets the bittersweet tone of this remarkable novel. Pegeen describes herself as an "amadan," a fool; indeed, soon after her chat with Marie, Pegeen tumbles down her own basement stairs. The magic of McDermott's novel lies in how it reveals us all as fools for this or that, in one way or another.

Marie's first heartbreak and her eventual marriage; her brother's brief stint as a Catholic priest, subsequent loss of faith, and eventual breakdown; the Second World War; her parents' deaths; the births and lives of Marie's children; the changing world of her Irish-American enclave in Brooklyn - McDermott sketches all of it with sympathy and insight. This is a novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived; a crowning achievement by one of the finest American writers at work today".

The title comes at the end of Book One: After Walter Hartnett drops Marie...."Who's going to love me?...Someone".