An ordinary life—its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion—lived by an ordinary woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott's extraordinary seventh novel.
We first glimpse Marie as a child: a girl in thick glasses waiting on a stoop in 1930s Brooklyn. Through her first heartbreak and eventual marriage; her brother's brief stint as a Catholic priest, and his emotional breakdown; her career as a neighborhood "consoling angel"; her parents' deaths; the births and lives of her children—we follow Marie through the changing world of the twentieth century and her Irish-American enclave. Rendered with great empathy and insight, Someone is a novel that speaks of life as it is lived daily, with passion and heartbreak and a good deal of foolishness—the crowning achievement of one of the finest American writers at work today.
- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Picador (October 7, 2014)
- ISBN-13: 978-1250055361