Charming Billy

Rating:
Summary: You either love it, or you hate it
Review: In reading the other reviews I have decided that a reader will either love it or hate it. It depends on what you are looking for when choosing a novel to read and how much you can relate to the story or to the characters. Now if you are looking for a thick juicy plot with lots of suspense and drama, then this is not the book to pick up. But if you are looking for a book that forces you to become nostalgic and drift off into your own ideas on important themes such as family, friends, living and dying, then this book is for you. As far as relating to the story or to the characters, if you are Irish American or know any personally, then you will absolutely love this book. The loyalty, the stubborness, the honesty, the hidden emotions, the reaction to death and dying that are so typical of many Irish Americans are portrayed in an elegant and nostalgic way. I will concede that it takes a while to get the whole story clear and to figure out who is who, but it is worth the challenge if even just to witness excellent writing skills.

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderfully Written Novel
Review: Alice McDermott is a great writer and this novel about an Irish American alcoholic is a minor masterpiece. McDermott's style is to time slice anecdotes about Billy during thirty years of life. We meet the young charmer full of romantic yearnings about love. And we see the pathetic drunkard who full of Catholic dogma tries to quit drinking through love of Christ. While Billy is the title character, it is his cousin who is the star of the novel. I would urge anyone who has an interest in Irish Americana, Catholic fiction or just plain good writing to read the novel. You will enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: A book of depth
Review: I echo the other favorable reviews in terms of the writing, the unfolding of the story line - which Amazon's synopsis destroys, by the way and should be removed - and the masterful character development. The point I'd like to add is that although I read this book when it was first printed years ago, I got chills and just a bit weepy in a sweet way from only reading ABOUT the book here, where I came to purchase a copy for a friend. The story and characters truly have stayed with me in a powerful way for all these years. What an unexpected treat this book was. I wish I'd never read before it so I could 'find' it again...

Rating:
Summary: Charming Billy is classic Alice McDermott
Review: I've always been a avid fan of Alice McDermott. Her use of language is in a leaque of its own. As a physician at a major medical center I often use her work to illustrate to foreign physicians the ultimate use of the English language. Charming Billy is a beautifully crafted novel and so perfectly illustates Ms. McDermott's abilities as a master story teller and intellectual. While several of the on-line reviews suggested that readers had difficulty following the story line or were simply bored because of the lack of action and/or suspense, I would argue that this is charm of Charming Billy. Although at first pass Charming Billy appears relatively simple, in fact, it is a highly complex novel and requires a great deal of concentration and intellegence on the part of the reader. I am certain that Charming Billy was not written in a day and I doubt that Ms. McDermott intended it to be read in an evening. Bravo to Ms. McDermott on winning the National Book Award. A well deserved honor.

Rating:
Summary: Have we lost interest in great writing?
Review: Many of the reviews criticize the weak plot (when there is, in fact, a reasonable story line) and disappointment in the character development. But McDermott does a beautiful job of painting a picture of real people, many of whom have probably existed in your life at one time or another. Their weaknesses are real, bu they are not Greek tragedies. And the language the author uses to describe the comfort people find in death, the acceptance of alcoholism, the reality of tragedy is gripping but not pretentious. Try this book. It is not long, but every page is a treasure.

Rating:
Summary: Not-So-Charming
Review: McDermott is a skillful writer and weaves thoughtful plots with substance. However, Charming Billy seems to create a massive void between reader and character(s)...there was such distance between me and the story...I did not quite believe the caricature snapshots of how wonderfully charming Billy was...after all, he was drunk most of the time. AFter 30 years of drinking and allowing alcohol to become the most hotly pursued thing in one's life, I think the charm has probably worn off a bit(at least in the real world). I enjoyed the Irish Catholic humor, the narration for the most part, and the ironies. But just when I got a bit comfortable and enjoyed getting to know a character, McDermott switched voices, characters, and created a frustrating read.
I gave it 3 stars for the authentic effort, and McDermott's play on words. For the most part, it just "didn't work."

Rating:
Summary: This is a great book!
Review: The audiobook version of this title is a curious affair. At first I was confused because the voice Prichard uses for a number of the characters sounds almost exactly like the voice of that freaky little midget woman in The Exorcist. It took a while before I figured out that the characters were not supposed to be undead - rather, they were simply animated by Prichard using the worst Irish accent in the history of humankind.

On top of that, Prichard reads 60% of the sentences with an inflection of wry irony, as if the sentence contained some nugget whose foolish and accidental charms, though undetectable by most, were so glaringly obvious to her that she was forced to acknowledge them with a smirk and an upturned lip. This is a fine dramatic technique when used sparingly and appropriately, but not, for instance, when reading a restaurant menu.

Imagine what it would sound like if James Hetfield narrated a version of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" complete with antiquated English accent. This is uncomfortably close to the spirit of Prichard's recording.

The box says that Prichard is an actress. Consequently, my new conception of Hell is hanging upside down in a straight jacket from the ceiling of an intimate and overheated fringe theater above a Brixton curry house, forced to endure a playbill featuring Prichard and William Shatner in period costume performing a dramatic reading of "Jude the Obscure."

Uff da.

Rating:
Summary: "Billy" isn't charming, but McDermott's book is.
Review: The charm of Charming Billy, the title character of Alice McDermott's fourth novel, is a little hard to see. He drinks too much, causing his wife many sleepless nights. His best friend gets hauled out of bed at 3 a.m. to help collect Billy from wherever he's fallen into a drunken stupor. Billy's life was damaged by a girl who, he believes, died before they could get married. However, the truth is that the girl went home to Ireland, stole Billy's money to buy a gas station, and married somebody else. Billy's best friend has kept this secret for twenty years. That's the premise of this remarkable tale, which is told in flashback beginning at Billy's wake in a compelling fashion that makes the reader want to understand more about Billy and the people who are part of his life. Billy feels sorry for himself, but he also puts on a charming Irish air. Part of an extensive Irish-American community on Long Island, Billy somehow brings out the best in people, who sympathize with his plight - almost everyone believes that his beloved is dead - and so protect him from the world as he slowly drinks himself to death. The stereotype of the drunken Irish is an old one, and it's handled here extremely well, centering not so much on Billy, but on the people around him, and the effect of Billy's drinking on them. Billy goes to Ireland to make a retreat for alcoholics - a trip with a mission, to give up the drink. On that trip, he goes to visit the grave of his lost love. "He foresaw a grassy plot and a granite stone engraved with her name, and the dates, the last not merely marking the end of her life but the end of his youth and that glorious and astounding possibility that he had once inhabited. He foresaw his own pale fingers, which trembled anyway, tracing the carved numbers and words." Instead, he finds her behind the counter at the gas station. "Her hair had been lightened to a honey blond and no longer matched her dark eyes, although the eyes themselves had stayed true. Her skin was rough and lined, a new downward turn to her lips, a second chin. She was back from the dead for him, there was that, but there was also half a lifetime of mistaken belief.... It wasn't only her being alive that took some getting used to, it was that she had lived, it was how she had lived." And so the pledge of sobriety was short-lived. "Even Father Jim might excuse him, pledge or no, if he knew what he'd been through this afternoon. If he could begin to appreciate this soaking sense of foolishness." It was a hard life for Charming Billy, but harder still for those around him. If there are alcoholics in your family, you'll find this a hard book to read, but somehow all the more important for its perspective. Charming Billy is beautifully written and elegantly crafted, and well worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: lacking charm and construction
Review: The first chapter of this book has the quiet charm and colorful charactors one would expect, but it quickly devolves into a confused meander through side stories, secondary charactors and long passages (pages and chapters) of people sitting and telling the story to someone else - at a wake, a bar, etc, creating a distance between the reader and a flattening of any plot tension. This is heightened by the undefined narrator/lens figure. Yes, she is the daughter of Billy's good friend, but beyond being there as a witness to the conversations and reminiscences, she plays no narrative role, has no stake in the story, no life outside the story, in short, she is flat. Why McDermott chose this way to construct the story is beyond me - the occaisional interjections of the narrator's first person voice every 30 pages are a disruption that contributes nothing to the story.
The main story, of a man who is told by his best friend his fiancee has died, when she (we learn in first chapter) married someone else, could have been interesting, but it is never developed as other charactors' loves and work tales take over. The whole thing feels like listening to someone else's family stories where you don't really know who is who, and after awhile, don't care.

Rating:
Summary: You will enjoy it
Review: You will enjoy this book - McDermott's writing is very unique and very refreshing from the ordinary. For something different, read here.