Alice McDermott
Auteur van Charming Billy
Over de Auteur
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 toon meer 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) toon minder
Werken van Alice McDermott
These short, dark days 2 exemplaren
Post 2 exemplaren
Enough [short story] — Auteur — 1 exemplaar
McDermott, Alice Archive 1 exemplaar
Gerelateerde werken
More Stories We Tell: The Best Contemporary Short Stories by North American Women (2004) — Medewerker — 64 exemplaren
Selected Shorts: Food Fictions (Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story) (2007) — Medewerker — 11 exemplaren
Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Gangbare naam
- McDermott, Alice
- Geboortedatum
- 1953-06-27
- Geslacht
- female
- Nationaliteit
- USA
- Geboorteplaats
- Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Woonplaatsen
- Brooklyn, New York, USA
Bethesda, Maryland, USA - Opleiding
- 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) - Beroepen
- novelist
professor - Relaties
- Turco, Lewis (teacher)
- Organisaties
- University of California, San Diego
American University - Prijzen en onderscheidingen
- Whiting Writers' Award (1987)
F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Fiction (2010) - Agent
- Harriet Wasserman (Harriet Wasserman Literary Agency)
- Korte biografie
- 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
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Discussies
novel, 50s-60s era, family, four kids? Catholic, one son dies in Vietnam in Name that Book (november 2016)
Besprekingen
Absolution: A Novel door Alice McDermott
Early 1960’s and Kennedy is President when young men both military and civilians with families were sent to Saigon to help the Soth Vietnamese defend democracy. Novel is told from the wives point of view who are left alone while the husbands do important things. Charlene, a force among the mostly passive women wants to do good but also make a little side money. Rachel new to Saigon and childless falls in with Charlene’s side hustle and begins to see South Vietnam from a different perspective than her husband. The ambiguity of what the US wants to foster in Vietnam is played with but mostly we see the wives POV. Interesting book and a reminder how straight we all once were.… (meer)
In all but length, I found this a very slight novel with little of interest in terms of plot, characters, and theme. The writing is controlled, a little too prettily polished, and even slightly phoney. I expected more and ultimately rate it an inconsequential piece.
Really enjoyed this book to see the Vietnam War from a young American bride's perspective and trying to fit into life in Saigon.
Tricia is a young wife who accompanied her husband to Saigon. It's 1963, and the expat life of garden parties, evening drinks and children attending the international school while living in lavish homes cared for by local help is still normal. Tricia, by nature a good girl who grew up working class Catholic in Yonkers, is ready to do her part to help her husband's career. She's naturally shy, but keenly observant and she falls in easily with Charlene, a woman with goals and plans and the forceful nature needed to carry them out. She's quickly co-opted into Charlene's work, at first bringing toys to hospitalized children (and cigarettes to their parents), then into a plan that involves trips out to a leper colony. But the war is becoming something that can't be ignored and Tricia is forced into looking at how the very best of intentions can do harm.
The novel takes the form of letters written between Tricia and Charlene's daughter, in which Tricia explains how people thought and acted in that time and place, through the lens of what we now know. It's a balancing act, to tell the story of a woman in 1963, through her eyes then and now and McDermott is able to make that work. Charlene's actions, and therefore many of Tricia's were what we would look at now with a critical eye, as does the present day Tricia, looking closely at how what they were doing was just feel-good work for a large part, but also work that sometimes did real good and sometimes real harm. McDermott's characters seem fairly simple on the surface, but there's a lot of complexity under the surface. I will be thinking about the characters and the choices they made for some time. I recommend going into this book knowing as little as possible about it ahead of time.… (meer)
The novel takes the form of letters written between Tricia and Charlene's daughter, in which Tricia explains how people thought and acted in that time and place, through the lens of what we now know. It's a balancing act, to tell the story of a woman in 1963, through her eyes then and now and McDermott is able to make that work. Charlene's actions, and therefore many of Tricia's were what we would look at now with a critical eye, as does the present day Tricia, looking closely at how what they were doing was just feel-good work for a large part, but also work that sometimes did real good and sometimes real harm. McDermott's characters seem fairly simple on the surface, but there's a lot of complexity under the surface. I will be thinking about the characters and the choices they made for some time. I recommend going into this book knowing as little as possible about it ahead of time.… (meer)
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