A sweet story to which I did not connect.

Beautiful and complicated, as is life. Splendidly written. Deeply compassionate even to the least, the most difficult among us. McDermott doesn’t shy away from anything in this examination of faith and love and community, but holds up a mirror of incarnation, at times repulsive and noxious, by which the reader engages with their own morality, and their own capacity for kindness and understanding. Life, McDermott shows us, is messy and absurd and fierce and funny and...glorious for all that.

I enjoyed this book, particularly the descriptions. There were times when I was confused—the author was prone to throw out a detail about someone that I was convinced I had misread or somehow missed, only to develop that thread 50 pages later. It’s not a plot device I mind, necessarily, but I think other writers give a bit more to nibble on or have the detail less out from right field than this author did.

This latest novel by Alice McDermott gets four stars only because Charming Billy must remain, for me, her finest work. Were it not for my devotion to it—which I recall reading, and sharing, and loving, with my late mother—then this gorgeously understated, quietly powerful glimpse behind the wimples and veils of nursing sisters, into their hearts and their good works and their values, would receive a virtual crown of stars. I particularly loved the character of Sister Illuminata, whose vocation ironically places her in the dark basement of a Brooklyn convent, where she ceaselessly toils to bring cleanliness, freshness,light and life to her kindred sisters and to the poor, the sick, and the orphaned. The ways in which she and her colleagues befriend and shape the lives of three families, none of whom are forsaken in the ninth hour or in any hour, are beautiful, wise, and wholly human.

This book centers on the lives of a young widow and her daughter in Irish Catholic Brooklyn in probably the early 20th century. It is a gentle story of their relationship as it is intertwined with the lives of nuns that look after the sick and poor in their neighborhood. It nicely illustrates how the the Catholic Church was a central part of everyone's lives and thinking in that culture and the benefits from that, as well as some of the disadvantages. The first problem is the inability to bury the father in the church grounds because his death was a suicide. His wife lives with the shame but is able to shield her daughter from it, partly because no one ever discussed it after the unmarked burial. One of the central themes, played out in small and large ways by many of the characters, is a rebellion of spirit against some of the strict doctrines of the church, many of which would not be such a problem in this day and age.

Sweet, understated storytelling. Irish nuns in Brooklyn- drama in the convent! And that ENDING! Slow read, but it was worth it I think.