Someone

Starred review from June 17, 2013
In this deceptively simple tour de force, McDermott (Charming Billy, winner of the National Book Award) lays bare the keenly observed life of Marie Commeford, an ordinary woman whose compromised eyesight makes her both figuratively and literally unable to see the world for what it is. When we meet her on the steps of her Brooklyn townhouse, she’s a bespectacled seven-year-old waiting for her father; McDermott then leaps ahead, when Marie, pregnant with her first child, recalls collapsing at a deli counter and the narrative plunges us into a world where death is literally just around the corner, upending the safety and comfort of her neighborhood; “In a few months’ time, I would be at death’s door, last rites and all,” she relates. We follow Marie through the milestones of her life, shadowed by her elder brother, Gabe, who mysteriously leaves the priesthood for which everyone thought he was destined. The story of Marie’s life unfolds in a nonlinear fashion: McDermott describes the loss of Marie’s father, her first experience with intimacy, her first job (in a funeral parlor of all places), her marriage, the birth of a child. We come to feel for this unremarkable woman, whose vulnerability makes her all the more winning—and makes her worthy of our attention. And that’s why McDermott, a three-time Pulitzer nominee, is such an exceptional writer: in her hands, an uncomplicated life becomes singularly fascinating, revealing the heart of a woman whose defeats make us ache and whose triumphs we cheer. Marie’s vision (and ours) eventually clears, and she comes to understand that what she so often failed to see lay right in front of her eyes. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Company.

Starred review from April 15, 2013
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.

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April 1, 2013

As evidenced by McDermott's National Book Award winner, Charming Billy, few authors are as good as she is at making the ordinary extraordinary. Her new novel opens with a young Marie meeting free-spirited Pegeen, who declares herself an amadan (a fool) and thereafter tumbles down a stairs, signaling the unexpected falls we fools all take. Through World War II and beyond, from Marie's marriage to her parents' death and her brother the priest's loss of faith, McDermott tracks one emblematic life.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2013
Who is going to love me? Marie asks her older brother, Gabe, after her heart is broken. Someone, he replies. How humble this pronoun is, and what a provocative title it makes. Readers who love refined, unhurried, emotionally fluent fiction will rejoice at National Book Awardwinner McDermott's return. McDermott (After This, 2006) is a master of hidden intensities, intricate textures, spiked dialogue, and sparkling wit. We first meet Marie at age seven, when she's sitting on the stoop in her tight-knit, Irish-Catholic Brooklyn neighborhood, waiting for her father to come home from work. Down the street, boys play stickball, consulting with dapper Billy, their blind umpire, an injured WWI vet. Tragedies and scandals surge through the enclave, providing rough initiations into sex and death. Gabe becomes a priest. Marie works at a funeral home as a consoling angel, acquiring cryptic clues to the mysteries of life via teatime gossip sessions with the director's wise mother and a circle of wryly knowing nuns. Eventually Marie finds joy as a wife and mother, while Gabe struggles with his faith and sexuality. A marvel of subtle modulations, McDermott's keenly observed, fluently humane, quietly enthralling novel of conformity and selfhood, of lace-curtain pretensions as shield and camouflage, celebrates family, community, and the grace of a shared past. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A new McDermott novel is big news, and Someone will be heralded nationally with an author tour and enhanced cross-country publicity in all media.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

October 28, 2013
The challenge of narrating McDermott’s latest novel is its impressionistic quality—the story wends back and forth through time, from prewar childhood in Brooklyn to middle-aged parenthood, old age, and back again. The one constant in the book is the protagonist, Marie, who has compromised eyesight, but offers keen observations about human nature. In this audio edition Kate Reading provides a needed constancy. Her female characters have a world-weariness about them. Whether they are sighing with subtle disappointment at a daughter’s inability to bake bread or keening with grief in the neighborhood funeral home, Reading makes their range of emotions entirely believable. She is not quite as successful with the novel’s male characters, which lack vocal differentiation. Even Marie’s sensitive brother Gabe and her entirely insensitive boyfriend, Walter, sound much the same. But, considering how much of the novel is about women’s lives and experiences, this is a minor flaw in an otherwise excellent performance. An FSG hardcover.

August 1, 2013

All people are interesting if we only know their story. When readers first meet Marie Commeford, she is seven years old, waiting on the steps for her father to return to their Brooklyn home. From a chance encounter with a hapless neighbor girl that same day to her parents' deaths, through World War II, Marie's first sexual encounter, marriage and children, to her brother's sudden departure from the priesthood, this novel moves from one emotionally rich touch point to the next in a nonlinear narrative that echoes memory itself. Winner of the National Book Award for Charming Billy, novelist McDermott continues to captivate readers by delving into ordinary, daily life with skill and compassion, showing us that we can't always see at the time what will be meaningful in our lives. VERDICT While McDermott's is a quiet style, fans of her earlier work will be thrilled to come across this simple, bittersweet story that will find appeal among readers of Alice Munro and Ann Patchett. [See Prepub Alert, 3/11/13.]--Gwen Vredevoogd, Marymount Univ. Libs., Arlington, VA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.