Alice McDermott Summary

Alice McDermott has developed a reputation as the premier chronicler of the ordinary lives of Irish Catholic New Yorkers in the twentieth century. Though reluctant to be categorized as either an Irish... Read more

An American novelist, short story writer, critic, and editor, Tyler won a National Book Critics Circle Award for The Accidental Tourist (1985) and a Pulitzer Prize for her Breathing Lessons (1988). In... Read more

In the following review, Kakutani praises McDermott's use of children as narrators in At Weddings and Wakes and her thematic focus on loss. Alice McDermott's last novel, the criticall... Read more

In the following review, Eder appreciates McDermott's use of period detail and complex narration in At Weddings and Wakes. Get the subatomics right and you get the universe right; get the qu... Read more

In the following review, Baumann commends McDermott's evocation of daily life and family ties in At Weddings and Wakes. Old Momma Towne, the widowed Irish matriarch of Alice McDermott'... Read more

In the following positive review of A Bigamist's Daughter, Harvey commends McDermott's refusal to sentimentalize her characters' loneliness. It's no disparagement of Ali... Read more

An American critic, Kakutani is a regular contributor to The New York Times. In the following mixed review of That Night, Kakutani asserts that while McDermott's failure to clarify the relation... Read more

An American critic, Eder received a 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism and a 1987 citation for excellence from the National Book Critics Circle. In the following review of That Night, he lauds McDermot... Read more

In the following review, Watkins maintains that although McDermott's narrator often distracts readers from the characters whose story she is recounting, That Night powerfully represents the los... Read more