At Weddings and Wakes
Description
Twice a week, Lucy Dailey leaves suburbia with her three children in tow, returning to the Brooklyn home where she grew up and where her stepmother and unmarried sisters still live. Aunt Veronica, with her wounded face and dreams of beauty, drowns her sorrows in drink. Aunt Agnes, an acerbic student of elegance, sips only from the finest crystal as she sees Aunt May, the ex-nun, blossom with a late and unexpected love. And all the while, the children watch, absorbing the legacy of their haunted family.
At once a moving evocation of life’s inexplicable calamities and a magical celebration of childhood and familial love, At Weddings and Wakes is the story of three generations of an Irish-American family through the eyes of its youngest members. With eloquence and grace, master storyteller Alice McDermott transforms everyday experience into the heroic and universal.
Praise for At Weddings and Wakes
"A beautifully wrought novel ... about all families and all families' encounters with love, morality, and sorrow."—The New York Times
"A brilliant, highly complex, extraordinary piece of fiction and a triumph for its author."—Chicago Tribune
"A haunted, troubled, beautifully articulated journey into the past."—San Francisco Chronicle
"It's hard to lift your eyes at the end of the book ... you'll find yourself reading every word ... not because it's complicated but because such wonderful things happen deep inside the sentences."—Newsweek
