Charming Billy

Rating:
Summary: A lovely read
Review: I'm so surprised to read the negative comments. I thought this was a wonderful book about love, friendship and family. I was completely wrapped up in the characters and the delightful prose, and finished it in a weekend.

Rating:
Summary: Hard to read, depressing, boring book.
Review: The writer tells you the outcome first then drags you through hundreds of pages of run on, awkwardly written sentences. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen. It did when I finished the book and went on to read Janet Evanovich's Two for the Dough. Don't waste your time on Billy.

Rating:
Summary: 5 star prose, 3 star book
Review: I enjoyed reading Charming Billy for the style and prose but don't feel that I got to know the characters very well: I'd like to have known more about Billy's and Maeve's relationship and what relationship, if any, existed between Billy and Dennis's father, the other person in the book with some charm; why did the author keep info about the narrator until the end; what effect did his lie REALLY have on Dennis -- he seemed so matter-of-fact about it all (a Sheila trait); did he marry Maeve for love? companionship? guilt? I don't know if these people will stay with me like the characters in Angela's Ashes did.

Rating:
Summary: About the audio version...
Review: I rented the tape to fill the hours of a car trip. I struggled through two tapes of five then put them away. The reader has the most awful voice and the worst phony Irish accent. I may try the book itself so I can give the characters and narrator the voices I choose, but it's not high on my list. I have not been grabbed by the this book; I really don't much care what happens to anyone I have been introduced to so far.

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written
Review: This book is SO beautifully written, I had to write in response to those who are recommending it. Ms. McDermott summarizes the plot in the first chapter, so some readers may be turned off that it is not a "page turner". I enjoyed every page. The descriptions throughout are touchingly accurate, the characters all rang true. Truly a remarkable book.

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating book.
Review: Okay, no big moments. And the choice of the narrator was strange to me. But a lovely book that reveals Billy to you over its course. My understanding of him really changed as I read on. In that, I thought the book was masterful. Enjoyable too.

Rating:
Summary: One of the most sensitively written books I have ever read.
Review: This is not a "beach read." Maybe that's why some are so disappointed. I thought it was wonderful. I agree with the reader from Wisonsin who commented that it was great to have a book where not everything is explained and one life experience is not the reason for everything else that happens. I personally am sick to death of the genre of psychotherapy where everything is mother's/father's/teacher's fault. This was a great relief. It is a book of enormous sensitivity, which very accurately describes the weakness of human relationships in beautiful prose. It struck home with me particularly because I had just had a parent die, and experienced for myself the incomplete retelling of history which a family is capable of. What makes a person "Charming?" It is all the small things from the perspective of those who are the beneficiaries of them. That allows us to forget/ignore/erase any unpleasantness. What a true angle on human existance and insight Alice McDermott put into this book ! That every one of us is understood or remembered differently depending on which moment in time the persepctive is drawn. And it certainly has rung true in my non-Irish family. In my world, Alice McDermott's people are very real and her language is poetry. Three thumbs up!!

Rating:
Summary: Very depressing from cover to cover.
Review: I've always had a secret desire to be Irish - Charming Billy squashed all of that urge. What? Nearly 300 pages of one miserable anecdote after another. A waste of my time and good humor. MWY

Rating:
Summary: Don't read this book!
Review: I got through it but was so happy when it was over so I could read something different. I found most of this book unenjoyable to say the least.

Rating:
Summary: Boring!
Review: I purchased Charming Billy because I was under the impression that a book had to be good in order to get an award. That is definetely not the case with this book. The story has no plot and goes no where. You are told the fate of the man at the very beginning and the book doesn't get anymore interesting from there. Don't bother reading it. There are too many wonderful works of literature out there to waste time with such a boring book!