At Weddings and Wakes

Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: I thought this book was terrible - very disappointing. You say it's difficult to tell a story through the eyes of children - maybe that's why I could never figure out which generation they were talking about. The endless description of everything at the beginning of the book made me keep looking for the story and, once I found it, was disappointed in what I found. The only reason I read this book to the end was that my bookclub was studying Charming Billy for the next meeting and I wanted to read another of her books first. I hope Charming Billy is better than this one.

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating read from a master storyteller
Review: In "At Weddings and Wakes," Alice McDermott brilliantly brings to life a tragically flawed Irish Catholic family from Brooklyn. Told through the eyes of the three children, each character in this deeply moving piece resonants with their own indivduality. By jumping between different time periods, McDermott entices the reader to follow without ever giving up the suspense. I could not put this book down. But as much as I wanted to see what happened, I didn't want it to end. Alice McDermott is, quite simply, a master storyteller.

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully Boring
Review: It is a shame that this novel, which has some of the most hauntingly beautiful writing I've come across, is so deadly boring. While Alice McDermott is capable of creating some wonderful scenes - some funny, some heartbreaking, many recognizable - because this novel is a string of memories there is no conflict, no real dramatic tension. I have no problem with slow-moving, contemplative novels, but there has to be some through-line; otherwise, what you end up with is oftentimes similar to this book. "At Weddings and Wakes" is like a well-written diary: fascinating, sad, funny, and tender, and when you've finished all you have are snapshots, not a novel.

Rating:
Summary: Like Monet
Review: More like a Monet than a photograph, McDermott's, "At Weddings and Wakes" reveals its beauty by memory impressions rather than by the harsh black lines of plot. No less lost than others who have written here in the ebb and flow of the timeline, I, however, trusted the author. And soon I was intermixing with the memories of the book my own childhood memories - and identifying, in the moment, with the joys and tragedies of this family. I dare suggest any who read this book, liking it or not, will find themselves remembering family stories of times past - memories happy and sad, with characters tragic and heroic and possibly rethinking them in the light of McDermott's graceful treatment of such moments. It was an exquiste read. That is, for those who are comfortable with impressions leading you to see clearly the beauty in life's tragedies and joys, as like a Monet painting. But if you need/seek/want the clarity of a photograph for beauty - skip this book.

Rating:
Summary: Like Monet
Review: More like a Monet than a photograph, McDermott's, "At Weddings and Wakes" reveals its beauty by memory impressions rather than by the harsh black lines of plot. No less lost than others who have written here in the ebb and flow of the timeline, I, however, trusted the author. And soon I was intermixing with the memories of the book my own childhood memories - and identifying, in the moment, with the joys and tragedies of this family. I dare suggest any who read this book, liking it or not, will find themselves remembering family stories of times past - memories happy and sad, with characters tragic and heroic and possibly rethinking them in the light of McDermott's graceful treatment of such moments. It was an exquiste read. That is, for those who are comfortable with impressions leading you to see clearly the beauty in life's tragedies and joys, as like a Monet painting. But if you need/seek/want the clarity of a photograph for beauty - skip this book.

Rating:
Summary: Like Monet
Review: Reading At Weddings and Wakes is like sharing a dream. Events are described with a crystalline clarity and tone perfect attention to detail, allowing us to be swept into the experience without knowing a lot of history of the characters.Even the names of the people appear only incidentally later in the book. The book unfolds slowly and almost cinematically as three children accompany their mother on a trip to Brooklyn to visit their grandmother and aunts. The pacing of the book is languid and deliberate. Characters appear and disappear, we hear snatches of conversations and recollections of past events. I love McDermott's language and though I am a fast reader, she forces me to slow down because each word is important. I am in absolute awe of her ability to tell a story, without resorting to conventional plot devices. I was so totally engaged with the characters and the situation, perhaps because it so closely mirrored my own experience growing up in an Irish Catholic family. Yet I believe the book transends the particulars of place as it addresses the central issues of life: joy and tragedy, our inability to let go of the past and our need to enjoy the moment. Through the eyes of the children we understand how events become experience, as they observe adults who seem mired in their histories, unable to find joy in the moment and move forward.
The love the children share with their favorite aunt,May, the only adult, apart from their father who is actively seeking happiness and finding joy, is palpable. It is so finely rendered that it brought back in a piercingly acute way, my own feelings for beloved and now departed family members. Other reader reviews makes it clear this isn't a book for everyone, but I will never forget it.

Rating:
Summary: Proust in the Suburbs
Review: Reading At Weddings and Wakes is like sharing a dream. Events are described with a crystalline clarity and tone perfect attention to detail, allowing us to be swept into the experience without knowing a lot of history of the characters.Even the names of the people appear only incidentally later in the book. The book unfolds slowly and almost cinematically as three children accompany their mother on a trip to Brooklyn to visit their grandmother and aunts. The pacing of the book is languid and deliberate. Characters appear and disappear, we hear snatches of conversations and recollections of past events. I love McDermott's language and though I am a fast reader, she forces me to slow down because each word is important. I am in absolute awe of her ability to tell a story, without resorting to conventional plot devices. I was so totally engaged with the characters and the situation, perhaps because it so closely mirrored my own experience growing up in an Irish Catholic family. Yet I believe the book transends the particulars of place as it addresses the central issues of life: joy and tragedy, our inability to let go of the past and our need to enjoy the moment. Through the eyes of the children we understand how events become experience, as they observe adults who seem mired in their histories, unable to find joy in the moment and move forward.
The love the children share with their favorite aunt,May, the only adult, apart from their father who is actively seeking happiness and finding joy, is palpable. It is so finely rendered that it brought back in a piercingly acute way, my own feelings for beloved and now departed family members. Other reader reviews makes it clear this isn't a book for everyone, but I will never forget it.

Rating:
Summary: This book have a personality, it is a strong.
Review: The auctor wrote it with your heart and transmite us a knowledge of the history.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant evocation of memory.
Review: The quality of memory is brilliantly conveyed in this novel: the details, the dreaminess, the layers of knowing - knowing what you knew as a child and what you learned later and what happened after that. The book is a quantity of detail that never becomes claustrophobic. In the opening pages, we have a minute description of the mother, her three children, and their bus ride from Long Island to the city to visit relatives. Without boring the reader, McDermott renders exquisitely how excrutiatingly boring such visits can be for children, who don't understand exactly what's going on among the adults but understand perfectly the tension. Out of this wealth of detail emerges the story of a family, and though thoroughly Irish and Catholic, these are characters recognizable in any family - the beautiful, disappointed one, the one determined to be happy, the adored alcoholic, the smart, embittered one. We see the way family stories take on a life of their own and family problems are more like the air one breathes than explicitly defined events and situations that can be rationally addressed. "Aren't you glad that you only have to see your relatives at weddings and wakes?" says a teenager to her younger cousins. They all agree, but the reader knows the truth - each one of them is a unique product of their common family, as is each one of us.

Rating:
Summary: This book is (almost quite entirely) exasperating
Review: The style of McDermott's writing is a dense as her plot. She likes to put (many and often used) parenthesis into her works which I find (truly it is so) as distracting as those who like to use--for whatever purpose--those dash lines between sentences. It's like the author wants to sneak in one more thought, one more pretty adjective, one more descriptive clause, etc., before letting go their iron grasp. McDermott's technique aside, her characters are also exasperating. Their life of repression, of coddled, forced respectability was enough to make me want to slap them silly (except for May, who the author HAD to kill off at the end, the only one who showed some spunky sense). Lucy, her kids...God, how lucky they were to have a father who could tolerate all of them without running for divorce court pronto. Bob was a jewel, hardworking, tolerant, compliant, and STILL Lucy had to complain, moan, weep and wail. All of this unecessary emotion became old fast...each and every one of those four silly sisters silently weeping and running off into their seperate darkened bedrooms miffed and slighted. WHAT the heck were they all supposed to be so upset about was never truly made clear. Slights remembered, sad times recalled, okay, sure...but why? Couldn't entirely figure it out, even though some of the stock tragedies (mostly deaths) McDermott doled out were worthily described and made for some temporary flash-in-the-pan good reading. Overall there is no sustained oomph to this novel, no emphasis behind any of it. The characters were so careful, so prissy...so perplexing. I truly wanted to get wound up in those sisters, to catch a hint of why they were so overlywrought amidst the endless ins and outs of their non-noteworthy, piddling lives. Never did, and in the end it was as unsatisfying as breathing musty, fusty stale old air, which this novel reeks of.