Login
Register
Home || Search || About us || Blog || Contact us || Other book sites

Name: Charming Billy

Author: Alice McDermott
Year: 1998
Rank:

Rating:

Original Rating:

Popularity: 3.3
Genres/categories: Award winners, Fiction
Culture: Ireland

Purchase/research links:
Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction in 1998.
Winner of the American Book Award in 1999.

The late Billy Lynch's family and friends gather at a small bar and grill in the Bronx to remember better times. His widow, Maeve, is there and everyone admires the way she is holding up, just as they always admired the way she cared for Billy after the alcohol had ruined him. But one cannot think of Billy without saying at some point, 'There was that girl'. On Long Island one summer years ago, Billy fell in love with a beautiful Irish girl working for a wealthy Park Avenue family. Billy wanted to marry Eva, but then she went back to Ireland. And then Billy's cousin Dennis had to break the terrible news: Eva had died of pneumonia. Billy never got over it. Anybody who knew him would tell you so. Billy began courting Maeve not long after, but for the rest of their lives, he, she and Dennis shared a hidden, twisted grief.
Similar books:

At Weddings and Wakes
by Alice McDermott

A Bigamist's Daughter
by Alice McDermott

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
by Roddy Doyle

The Sea
by John Banville

History of the Rain
by Niall Williams

Nohow On
by Samuel Beckett

Reading in the Dark
by Seamus Deane

The Spinning Heart
by Donal Ryan

Amongst Women
by John McGahern

The Mermaids Singing
by Lisa Carey

Felicia's Journey
by William Trevor

Pomegranate Soup
by Marsha Mehran

The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B
by J. P. Donleavy

Songdogs
by Colum McCann

Grace Notes
by Bernard MacLaverty

The Gathering
by Anne Enright

Company
by Samuel Beckett

The Key Above the Door
by Maurice Walsh

Night Boat to Tangier
by Kevin Barry

The Heather Blazing
by Colm Toibin