Alice McDermott
Autor(a) de Charming Billy
About the Author
Alice McDermott was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 27, 1953. She received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Oswego in 1975 and an M.A. from the University of New Hampshire in 1978. After graduating college, she got a job reading unsolicited manuscripts for Redbook magazine and did mostrar mais some freelance reading for Esquire. She has taught writing at American University, the University of New Hampshire, and the University of California at San Diego. Currently, she is the Writing Seminars Professor of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Department. Her short stories and articles have appeared in numerous publications including Ms., Redbook, Mademoiselle, The New Yorker, Seventeen, the New York Times and the Washington Post. She has written several novels including A Bigamist's Daughter, At Weddings and Wakes, Child of My Heart, After This, Someone, and The Ninth Hour. That Night was made into a film starring C. Thomas Howell and Juliette Lewis in 1992. She has won several awards including the National Book Award for fiction in 1998 for Charming Billy, a Whiting Writers Award, and the 2008 Corrington Award for Literature. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Obras por Alice McDermott
These short, dark days 2 exemplares
Enough [short story] — Autor — 1 exemplar
McDermott, Alice Archive 1 exemplar
Post - One Story Number 280 1 exemplar
Post 1 exemplar
Associated Works
More Stories We Tell: The Best Contemporary Short Stories by North American Women (2004) — Contribuidor — 63 exemplares
Selected Shorts: Food Fictions (Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story) (2007) — Contribuidor — 11 exemplares
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Nome canónico
- McDermott, Alice
- Data de nascimento
- 1953-06-27
- Sexo
- female
- Nacionalidade
- USA
- Local de nascimento
- Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Locais de residência
- Brooklyn, New York, USA
Bethesda, Maryland, USA - Educação
- St. Boniface School, Elmont, Long Island, New York, USA (1967)
Sacred Heart Academy, Hempstead New York, USA (1971)
State University of New York, Oswego (BA|1975)
University of New Hampshire (MA | 1978) - Ocupações
- novelist
professor - Relações
- Turco, Lewis (teacher)
- Organizações
- University of California, San Diego
American University - Prémios e menções honrosas
- Whiting Writers' Award (1987)
F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Fiction (2010) - Agente
- Harriet Wasserman (Harriet Wasserman Literary Agency)
Fatal error: Call to undefined function isLitsy() in /var/www/html/inc_magicDB.php on line 425- McDermott was born in Brooklyn, New York. She attended St. Boniface School in Elmont, New York, on Long Island (1967), Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead (1971), and the State University of New York at Oswego, receiving her BA in 1975, and received her MA from the University of New Hampshire in 1978.
She has taught at UCSD and American University, has been a writer-in-residence at Lynchburg College and Hollins College in Virginia, and was lecturer in English at the University of New Hampshire. Her short stories have appeared in Ms., Redbook, Mademoiselle, The New Yorker and Seventeen. She has also published articles in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Ms. McDermott lives outside Washington, D.C. with her husband, a neuroscientist, and three children. She is Catholic, though she once deemed herself "not a very good Catholic
Membros
Discussions
novel, 50s-60s era, family, four kids? Catholic, one son dies in Vietnam em Name that Book (Novembro 2016)
Críticas
Absolution: A Novel por Alice McDermott
Told from one point of view, contemporaneously and looking back, Patricia reflects on her time as a naive newlywed in Saigon at the beginning of the US involvement in the Vietnam war. I admire McDermott's spare language and discipline in sticking to Patricia's reflections of a powerful period in her life when she became part of Charlene's "cabal".
This is my first book by the author Alice McDermott. The book is beautifully written. Most books about Vietnam take place in the late 1960s and revolve around the men fighting. This book takes place in 1963 Saigon and focuses on two wives, Charlene and Tricia. Their husbands are both civilians working for companies and the military in the early years of the Vietnam war. This is right before the US gets heavily involved in the conflict, before the protests and revolutions. The wives were there to be "helpmeets" to their husband and engage solely in social gatherings or charities.
The book was a little bit slow for me. It was told through a letter to Charlene's now adult daughter. It was more of a character development and not a story filled with action. However, I enjoyed reading it and learning more about what life was like for the women living overseas during this timeframe. I received a complimentary ebook through Netgalley.com in exchange for a review.… (mais)
The book was a little bit slow for me. It was told through a letter to Charlene's now adult daughter. It was more of a character development and not a story filled with action. However, I enjoyed reading it and learning more about what life was like for the women living overseas during this timeframe. I received a complimentary ebook through Netgalley.com in exchange for a review.… (mais)
From the flyleaf: "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 young newlywed told by society and her father, to be a good "helpmeet" to her new husband, a young lawyer on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene, is used to being a corporate wife and mother of three. In Saigon at the beginning of the War in 1963, Charlene adds Tricia to her group of military wives trying to do good for the Vietnam people while also being practiced in the art of looking well put together in the unrelenting heat, having and going to cocktail parties, writing formal notes, etc. There is so much going on in this beautiful book. It reminded me so much of my Mother who completely supported my father in his job, moving without complaint and entertaining constantly and beautifully the people that worked with my father. It's hard to imagine in this day and age that was a wife's main job along with raising children. Beautifully written and highly recommended!… (mais)
In 1963 Saigon, before the full fledged American involvement in Vietnam, two wives of husbands working in Saigon meet and develop a friendship of sorts. Tricia, a young, socially awkward woman from Yonkers is married to an engineer working with the US Navy. Charlene, mother of three, is socially aware, and hellbent on relieving some of the misery she sees around her with charitable gifts of toys, food, and clothing. Tricia’s life’s sadness is that she desperately wants to have a child but experiences multiple miscarriages. She strikes up a relationship with Charlene’s daughter, Rainey, whose Barbie doll becomes the inspiration for one of Charlene’s schemes to raise money for her gifts. The story is told in retrospective, from two POVs, that of the elderly Tricia and the middle aged Rainey via correspondence between the two.
This is a beautifully written, observant story that is both compelling and disturbing. Here is the life of women in the early 1960s when a wife’s role was to be a “help meet” for her husband. I loved how Tricia’s memories point out some of the absurdities of a woman’s life in those days.
Here also are the provocative thoughts and actions of America’s presence and role in Vietnam in that era as well as the plight of the Vietnamese citizens destined to be house workers for the Americans and living in poverty under the threat and fear of attacks. Who can forget that devastating photo of the young girl burned by napalm? Tricia certainly can’t.
The characterizations are strong and there is an evocative sense of time and place. As a memoir, this postulates that there is “no such thing as a life without regret”; how do we find release or absolution from the consequences of those regrets?
The more I think about this book, the better I like it.
Thanks to #netgalley and @fsgbooks for the ARC.… (mais)
This is a beautifully written, observant story that is both compelling and disturbing. Here is the life of women in the early 1960s when a wife’s role was to be a “help meet” for her husband. I loved how Tricia’s memories point out some of the absurdities of a woman’s life in those days.
Here also are the provocative thoughts and actions of America’s presence and role in Vietnam in that era as well as the plight of the Vietnamese citizens destined to be house workers for the Americans and living in poverty under the threat and fear of attacks. Who can forget that devastating photo of the young girl burned by napalm? Tricia certainly can’t.
The characterizations are strong and there is an evocative sense of time and place. As a memoir, this postulates that there is “no such thing as a life without regret”; how do we find release or absolution from the consequences of those regrets?
The more I think about this book, the better I like it.
Thanks to #netgalley and @fsgbooks for the ARC.… (mais)
1 
vkmarco | 5 outras críticas | Nov 1, 2023 |
vkmarco | 5 outras críticas | Nov 1, 2023 | Listas
Prémios
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 16
- Also by
- 5
- Membros
- 7,052
- Popularidade
- #3,476
- Avaliação
- 3.6
- Críticas
- 246
- ISBN
- 189
- Línguas
- 7
- Marcado como favorito
- 21