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Search - At Weddings and Wakes
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Book Description:
Scenes of a family unfold through childrens' eyes in Alice McDermott's extraordinary novel. Here, among family rituals and relationships, love and longing, recriminations and regret, an Irish-Catholic family comes vividly, brilliantly to life.Members who requested this book also requested:
Twice a week, Lucy Dailey leaves suburbia with her three children in tow, returning to the Brooklyn home where she grew up, and where her stepmother and unmarried sisters still live. Lucy longs for the ineffable as her sisters grapple with alcohol and absolution and her mother wrestles with the past.
Aunt Veronica, with her wounded face and dreams of beauty, drowns her sorrows in drink. Aunt Agnes, an acerbic student of elegance, sips only from the finest crystal as she sees Aunt May, the ex-nun who has vowed to find happiness, blossom with a late and unexpected love....
And the children watch, absorbing the legacy of their haunted family: "...like the dead, their presence would be all the more inescapable when they were gone."
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Genres:
- Literature & Fiction >> General >> Contemporary
- Literature & Fiction >> Genre Fiction >> Family Saga
- Literature & Fiction >> Authors, A-Z >> ( M ) >> McDermott, Alice
- Entertainment >> Humor >> General
Top Member Reviews
1 member(s) found this review helpful.
Try to read this when and where you will be free of distractions, because in order to grasp fully the beauty of McDermott's style, you have to pay attention. She writes a bit like Henry James, with long and somewhat complicated sentences. Nevertheless, the story and the way it is told is both moving and memorable. You will feel right at home identifying with the children through whose eyes the tale develops.
Paul D. from READING, PA wrote on 2/17/2006...
1 member(s) found this review helpful.
A female "Angela's Ashes."
Rate These Member Reviews
Amanda F. (This book is one of THE WORST BOOKS I have ever read! It took some time to get into McDermott's writing style as it was different from most books as well as others I have read by her. I initially credited my dislike of the book to this, however as I continued reading and got used to this style, I kept asking myself "where is the plot?". It was also very difficult to really get to know the characters and there were many points in the story when I had no idea who's point of view was being expressed. Of course, I have a rule to always finish reading a book once I start...so I kept reading and reading thinking it would get better, until finally I reached the end...and what a complete let down!!! I am truly disappointed with this story & it was not at all what I was expecting.
The author writes with beautiful flowing words. The story is told from the point of view of the Dailey children but, for me, that didn't work well. I would have expected more childlike thoughts & feelings. I feel like I didn't get to know the characters well. However, there is a lot of praise for the book so maybe it just wasn't my cup of tea. So it goes.
Joan V. from SAN ANTONIO, TX wrote on 1/27/2007..."A moving evocation of life's inexplicaable calamities and a magical celebration of childhood and familial love...the story of three generations of an Irish-American family through the eyes of its youngest members.
Life in an Irish family as seen and told by the children.
Kind of a comfy read,and very interesting.
Characters are real and at the end you don't want to let them go