The Ninth Hour is what I have to think of as contemporary McDermott; less atmospheric in a nostalgic sense (as with her earlier work, which I loved!) and more focused on a single life and its formative experiences, as shaped by others. Less plot-driven really, and more focused, intent, on character.

I was touched emotionally by this story, characterized by pathos and love. How strange—to me—that these peoples’ lives were totally orchestrated and governed by the Catholic Church. The recent Irish immigrants and their families were guided and controlled by an all powerful church which determined their options in life. Women,especially, were victims of the limited choices—get married and risk one’s life giving birth to numerous children, become a nun, or decide to be “touched” in the head, thereby relinquishing all responsibilities (and your husband’s advances).
The writing is exquisite and the story is compelling. I couldn’t help but think of what we now know went on behind closed doors, in churches and convents.

Set in early 20th-century Brooklyn, this novel focuses on the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor and a mother and her daughter whom the nuns have helped. Annie, a young widow, is given work in the convent’s laundry and her daughter Sally is virtually raised there. As a young woman, Sally considers joining the sisterhood but the reader knows she does not truly have a vocation because one of Sally’s children intermittently narrates the story.

It is the characterization of the nuns which stands out for me. They are seen as they work amongst the poor and wretched of the city; they are both nurses and social workers in the service of the indigent and sick. It is their task “to enter the homes of strangers, mostly the sick and the elderly, to breeze into their apartments and to sail comfortably through their rooms, to open their linen closets or china cabinets or bureau drawers – to peer into their toilets or the soiled handkerchiefs clutched in their hands.” They enter places “unprepared for visitors, arrested, as things so often were by crisis and tragedy, in the midst of what should have been a private hour.” As they visit invalids and shut-ins, details of what they see are not spared; bodily fluids are abundant. It is clear that these nuns are a dying breed: “The call to sanctity and self-sacrifice, the delusion and superstition it required, fading from the world even then.”

Each of the nuns emerges as a strong individual with a distinct personality. Though they perform numerous good deeds and are compassionate women, they are flawed human beings. Sister St. Saviour turns a cold shoulder to God; “It was the way a bitter old wife might turn her back on a faithless husband.” And she openly states, “’It would be a different Church if I were running it.’” Sister Lucy “lived with a small, tight knot of fury at the center of her chest.” And St. Jeanne claims, “’I lost heaven a long time ago’” because of a deed she performed out of love. It is refreshing to see nuns be willing to flout the rules when they feel it is best. One sister has little respect for the rules of church and society because she believes many of them “complicated the lives of women: Catholic women in particular and poor women in general.” The nuns are even willing to sin and face the consequences later. One who bends the rules makes a bargain with God: “Hold it against the good I’ve done, she prayed. We’ll sort it out when I see You.”

The book examines, in detail, the human condition. Everyone faces hunger of some sort, whether it be physical hunger or “a hunger to be comforted.” People want to be loved though it is repeated that for the world’s ills, “Love’s a tonic, . . . not a cure.” People strive to live a good life in their chosen role; Sister Illuminata, for example, labours in the laundry day after day because she believes herself to have been called “to become, in a ghastly world, the pure, clean antidote to filth.” Everyone faces death: “A terrible stillness would overtake them all, come what may. A terrible silence would stop their breaths, one way or another.”

This book is not full of action and adventure, but those who appreciate realistic characterization and an examination of real life will find much to admire.

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A peculiar beautifully written book, her writing to me is reminstant of [a:Markus Zusak|11466|Markus Zusak|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1537240528p2/11466.jpg]. It was interesting to learn about the nursing nuns as it was something completely new to me especially in the setting of NYC. The city doesn't play a huge role in the book which is actually nice since so many books turn the city into a character itself which it doesn't need to be. Weird but good is the best way to describe it.

This is definitely for me the most impactful novel of 2017. Such depth of thematic scope, such wealth of characterization, a panorama of a whole era and a society in transition, but also a meditation on faith, on familial obligations and emotions, and a history of religious orders of the Sisters of Mercy in the USA. With a subtle yet very complex structure that shifts between times and places, switching focus and perspective with seamless ease, Alice McDermott writes yet another poignant, meaningful work that is stylistically flawless and as telling of the ways of today as it is of the age before.

I would have thought a book like this, focused on Sisters and a convent, would have to be either religious or scornful of religion, but this is neither. It treats the sisters as any other character, with interior struggles and desires and joys. It’s less plot-driven than I usually prefer, but excellent characterization and description go a long way, and I do love nuns.

This was not a rip roaring adventure book. Instead it was quiet prose, a glimpse into life in another time, another place, Catholic Irish-American Brooklyn ... a slice of life. The writing is excellent ... the story melancholy.

"They had been friends for a long time."

McDermott builds scenes with tiny, vivid details and straightforward sentences, which are sometimes repeated later in the chapter. The repeated lines feel like a good imitation of memories, circular and hovering around emotional focal points. In one chapter, she repeats this line at a crucial moment ("They had been friends for a long time"), and it made me cry.

A lot of my positive reaction to this book is how personal it is for me. This is the time and place my grandparents were growing up (Catholic NYC in the early 20th century), so the details were personally revealing. Every once in a while, a detail would remind me of the lives of my grandmother or my great aunt, or of the houses they kept when I was small. Living memories of a different era.

As someone who is always struggling to navigate feminism and Catholicism, it was really satisfying to read the lives of these nuns who served women--nuns who both followed the rules imposed by multiple patriarchal systems and rebelled against them when they could. I really enjoyed this beautiful book, and now I want to write more like Alice McDermott.