At Weddings and Wakes

A remarkable novel of family life from the National Book Award-winning bestselling author Twice a week, Lucy Dailey leaves suburbia with her three children in tow, returning to the Brooklyn home where she grew up, and where her stepmother and unmarried sisters still live. Aunt Veronica, with her wounded face and dreams of beauty, drowns her sorrows in drink. Aunt Agnes, an acerbic student of elegance, sips only from the finest crystal as she sees Aunt May, the ex-nun, blossom with a late and unexpected love. And all the while, the children watch, absorbing the legacy of their haunted family. At once a moving evocation of life''s inexplicable calamities and a magical celebration of childhood and familial love, AT WEDDINGS AND WAKES is the story of three generations of an Irish-American family through the eyes of its youngest members. With eloquence and grace, master storyteller Alice McDermott transforms everyday experience into the heroic and universal.

Autorentext

Alice McDermott's novels include Someone, The Ninth Hour, After This, Child of My Heart, Charming Billy, At Weddings and Wakes, That Night and A Bigamist's Daughter. She won the National Book Award, has been Pulitzer Prize finalist three times and been nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. She lives with her family outside Washington DC.

Zusammenfassung
Twice a week, Lucy Dailey leaves suburbia with her three children in tow, returning to the Brooklyn home where she grew up, and where her stepmother and unmarried sisters still live. And all the while, the children watch, absorbing the legacy of their haunted family.