Finished Th 12/24/20- Xmas Eve.
This was one of the books that the Contemporary Book Club selected to read this year. I think this is a book that I recommended. I hope the group liked the book as much as I did.
A man believes that the love of his life went back to Ireland and died of pneumonia. She actually left Long Island (she and her sister were taking care of the children of a rich family) and went back to Ireland and married another man. She even used the money that Billy had given her to start a small business with her new husband.
The novel begins at Billy's funeral and most people believe that this 'emotional abandonment' caused his alcohol addiction.
His best friend and cousin is Dennis. He's responsible for the lie and the narrator of the novel is Dennis's daughter. She is not named.
From the book:
"In the arc of an unremarkable life, a life whose triumphs are small and personal, whose trials are ordinary enough, as tempered in their pain as in their resolution of pain, the claim of exclusivity in love requires both a certain kind of courage and a good dose of delusion."
From the review at Publishers Weekly:
"The death of charming Billy Lynch from alcoholism is the starting point from which McDermott (At Weddings and Wakes) meticulously develops this poignant and ironic story of a blighted life set in the Irish-American communities of Queens, the Bronx and the Hamptons. With dialogue so precise that a word or two conjures a complex relationship, she examines the curse of alcoholism and the cost it takes on family and friends. Did Billy drink because of a broken heart caused by the death of Eva, the young woman he ardently loved who had gone back to Ireland after their brief summer together? If so, his cousin Dennis has much on his conscience, since he knew that Eva used the money Billy sent her for return passage to put a down payment on a gas station for the man she decided to marry. Dennis spared Billy the humiliation of public jilting by inventing the story of Eva's demise. Or is alcoholism ""the genetic disease of the Irish,"" a refuge for souls who can sustain their religious faith in an afterlife only if earthly existence is pursued through a bleary haze? Was plain, courageous Maeve, the woman Billy eventually married, devastated by his drinking, or was her uncomplaining devotion yet another aspect of an ancient pattern in Irish families? McDermott sensitively probes the ties of a people bound by blood, long acquaintance, shared memories, the church and the tolerance of liquor in its men. If Billy drank to sustain his belief in heaven, to find redemption for his unfulfilled life on earth, is the church's teaching about death ""a well intentioned deception""? McDermott's compassionate candor about the demands of faith and the realities of living brings an emotional resonance to her seamlessly told, exquisitely nuanced tale."
I have read a couple of novels by McDermott and I plan to keep my eyes peeled for more of them.
A book that's meant to be savored rather than just read.
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