SOURCE: "Peculiar Realism," in The American Book Review, Vol. 15, No. 3, August-September, 1993, p. 21.

In the following review, Pool praises McDermott's vivid depiction of family closeness and the mounting emotional power of her narrative in At Weddings and Wakes as well as the novel's inherent realism.

Critics have justly praised Alice McDermott as a young writer who has gone her own way. Even her first novel, A Bigamist's Daughter, which, like so many first novels, never quite found its footing, was highly individual. But in her second novel, That Night, she came into her own, finding the peculiar and peculiarly effective brand of realism she sustains in her third work, At Weddings and Wakes.

When we think of realistic fiction, we tend to think of straightforward narratives, well-developed characters, events laid out in chronological order. Alice McDermott's fiction turns these expectations around. No novels could be more true-to-life than That...