SOURCE: "Letting a Little Air In," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 12, 1992, pp. 3, 7.

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 quarks in line and the quintessentials fall into place. So modern physics tells us, pausing periodically to wonder if it is true.

There are a few American writers who use the homely details of people's lives and behaviors that way. They get these details absolutely right, not for the purpose of description, or classification, or—as with some of the minimalists—taxidermy, but to ignite the transformations inside them.

Ann Tyler does it frequently in her shabby-genteel Baltimore; Bobby Ann Mason did it at least once, in the small Kentucky town of In Country; Susan Minot did it, also once, with the troubled...