Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English

SOMEONE

Alice McDermott

The heartbreaking and lyrical new novel from the National Book Award winning author of
Charming Billy that FSG will publish as a major literary event in Autumn 2013.

An ordinary life - its sharp pains and unexpected joys; its bursts of brilliant clarity and moments of profound confusion - lived by an ordinary woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott's extraordinary return to form, seven years after the publication of After This. Scattered recollections - of childhood, adolescence, motherhood, old age - come together in this transformative narrative, stitched into a vibrant whole by McDermott's deft, lyrical voice.

Marie's first heartbreak and her eventual marriage; her brother Gabe's brief stint as a Catholic priest, subsequent loss of faith, eventual breakdown; the Second World War; their parents' deaths; the births and lives of Marie's children; the changing world outside her Brooklyn window - McDermott sketches all of it with sympathy and insight. This is a novel that speaks truthfully of life as it is daily lived; a crowning achievement by one of the finest American writers at work today.

Alice McDermott is the author of six previous novels, including After This; Child of My Heart; That Night - finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Charming Billy - winner of the 1998 National Book Award; and At Weddings and Wakes. She has also won a Whiting Award and has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Available products
Book Published 2013-09-01 by Farrar Straus Giroux

Comments

"...McDermott, a three-time Pulitzer nominee, is such an exceptional writer: in her hands, an uncomplicated life becomes singularly fascinating, revealing the heart of a woman whose defeats make us ache and whose triumphs we cheer. Marie's vision (and ours) eventually clears, and she comes to understand that what she so often failed to see lay right in front of her eyes." Read more...

"While McDermott's is a quiet style, fans of her earlier work will be thrilled to come across this simple, bittersweet story that will find appeal among readers of Alice Munro and Ann Patchett." (starred review)

"One - maybe the best [reason to write a novel] is to bear compassionate witness to what it is to be alive, in this place, this time. This kind of novel is necessary to us. We need to know about other lives: This kind of knowledge expands our understanding, it enlarges our souls. There are differences between us, but there are things we share. Fear and vulnerability, joy and passion, the capacity for love and pain and grief: Those are common to us all. Those are the things that great novelists explore. And it's this exploration, made with tenderness, wisdom and caritas, that's at the heart of Alice McDermott's masterpiece."