A Christmas Wedding

by Andrew M. Greeley Narrated by Jonathan Marosz

Overview

From the bestselling author of Younger Than Springtime.
 
“Happy families are all alike,” said Tolstoy, and the O'Malleys are one of the happiest, if slightly crazy, families in current fiction. A Christmas Wedding continues the saga of Chucky, the youngest son, who wants to live the quiet life of an accountant and raise a nice Catholic family. Fate, of course, has other plans for Chucky, in the person of the beautiful Rosemarie, his off-again, on-again nemesis from the time he saved her life when he was a young man.

Thrown out of Notre Dame on trumped-up charges, Chucky ends up going to the University of Chicago. The only problem: His lifelong enemy Rosemarie is a fellow student. They decide to be “just friends,” and while they battle with each other, “just friends” turns into something neither of them expected.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

amiable third novel to feature the happy O'Malleys of Chicago (after A Midwinter's Tale and Younger Than Springtime) has a scant six pages devoted to the 1950 wedding itself, and not a sprig of holly in sight. The book primarily chronicles the 11 years following the holiday nuptials of Chucky O'Malley and his quasi-foster sister, Rosemarie Clancy. (When Rosemarie's mother died in an accidental fall when Rosemarie was in high school, the O'Malleys took her in.) At age 22, Chucky has already served time in the army, been kicked out of Notre Dame on false charges, and determined on a career in accounting. As the young couple's thoughts turn toward love and marriage, they must confront the demons from Rosemarie's past, including her troubling relationship with her father and the suspicious circumstances surrounding her mother's death as well as her predisposition to alcohol abuse. Greeley's habitual willingness to challenge Catholic dogma on matters such as sex and birth control, as well as his openness to ideas as far-ranging as those of Buddhism and evolutionary science, are in evidence here, and he is nothing if not politically opinionated. As a narrator, the gregarious Chucky, however, commits the sin of pride repeatedly and his self-congratulatory tone tends to grate. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Third installment in Father Greeley's ongoing O'Malley family saga begun in Chicago with A Midwinter's Tale (1998) and Younger Than Springtime (1999). In the last volume, Chuckie O'Malley was tossed out of Notre Dame, following WWII, for having a picture of Rosemarie Clancy in a twopiece swimsuit, for reading Joyce's Ulysses, and for having beer under his bed. And back in book one, when they were kids, he saved Rosemarie from drowning. Now Chuckie and Rosemarie both go to the University of Chicago, he to be an accountant, and she, in part, to forget her psychopathic father and alcoholic mother (who has recently died from a fall down the cellar stairs). Chuckie and Rosemarie plan to be "just friends," but the reader knows that hormonally—and from the title—the notion of mere friendship is foredoomed. Chuckie becomes an artistic photographer, Rosemarie his sometime model (capturing her doing a cartwheel he sees "a woman's soul transparent in her body"). Later, she's recovering from a heavy bottle problem herself, seeing a shrink, and with the death of her father becomes a wealthy woman.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175034944
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	11/08/2000
Series:	O'Malley Family , #3
Edition description:	Unabridged

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