Reviews for Charming Billy

The average rating for Charming Billy based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-11-24 00:00:00 Nali Tom 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...Those of us who claim exclusivity in love do so with a liar's courage: there are a hundred opportunities, thousands over the years, for a sense of falsehood to seep in, for all that we imagine as inevitable to become arbitrary, for our history together to reveal itself as only a matter of chance and happenstance, nothing irrepeatable, or irreplaceable, the circumstantial mingling of just one of the so many millions with just one more. Charming Billy tells of a New York Mic who, as a young man, had a great passion for an Irish lass. She returned to the old country and he expected her to come back when he sent for her. But she up and married someone else. His cousin Dennis knew the truth and lied to Billy, telling him she had died. Later in life, Billy goes to Ireland, intending to visit her grave, and finds her alive and feeling guilty. Oops. Alice McDermott - image from Johns Hopkins University The story is structured around a wake held for Billy after he had basically drunk himself to death, made up of the recollections of the folks present, a bit of their individual stories. The narrator is the daughter of his cousin and best buddy Dennis. The book describes the culture of its New York Irish Catholic characters (my peeps) through their relationships with each other. I was surprised that I felt mostly unmoved, but then, towards the end, when people realize the waste they have made of their lives, it struck a chord, or maybe was busy tuning up the entire bloody orchestra, and I was weepy as I turned the pages, pausing frequently with uncomfortable recognition. I found myself wishing or wondering about a choice made a lifetime ago and how things might have turned out had I decided otherwise. Of course, they might not have wound up any better. I'll just never know. The book captures that ennui well, and I recognize it in myself, having grown up in the culture she describes. Hopefully it is a curable trait, although at my age, I seriously doubt any such cure, even if found, would apply. I also recognize the pain of having spent so much of one's life dedicated to something that turned out to have been different from what I had expected and hoped for. The ability of Charming Billy to tug those heartstrings, to prompt one to step back and take a look at one's life, is one of the major strengths of the novel. That McDermott portrays with chilling accuracy and insight a living culture is another. There are reasons this book won the National Book Award. Published - December 31, 1997 Review first Posted - March 10, 2017 PS - I read this book in 1999 and wrote most of this review then, but did not post it until March 2017, after a bit of editing. =============================EXTRA STUFF The author's personal and FB pages

Review # 2 was written on 2007-09-17 00:00:00 Ben Maikan I confess, I have OWNED this book for a couple of years. I started it twice, thinking an award-winning book should surely win me, but both times set it aside. But after reading McDermott's "After This" recently, I picked up "Charming Billy" again. I can only think that the books we respond to are inextricably related to whatever consciousness or thoughtfulness or even patience with life we are currently experiencing. This all to say that this time around, I loved this book. The writing is so beautifully crafted, each sentence interesting as it wends its way through, down, and across the pages. The story of a tightly-knit group of New York Irish Catholics mourning the loss of one of their own, you almost emerge from the fog of an hour's reading with a brogue on your lips (though the characters have long lost theirs).