Child of My Heart: A Novel

by Alice McDermott

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Brilliantly told and emotionally resonant, Child of My Heart explores the dichotomy of human emotion, digging into the joys and sorrows on each side of the spectrum. With a deeply compelling narrator to top it off, this is an unforgettable story.

The beautiful child of older parents, raised on the eastern end of Long Island, Theresa is her town’s most sought-after babysitter—cheerful, poised, an effortless storyteller, a wonder with children and animals. Among her charges this fateful summer is Daisy, her younger cousin, who has come to spend a few quiet weeks in this bucolic place. While Theresa copes with the challenges presented by the neighborhood’s waiflike children, the tumultuous households of her employers, the attentions of an aging painter, and Daisy’s fragility of body and spirit, her precocious, tongue-in-cheek sense of order is tested as she makes the perilous crossing into adulthood.

In her deeply etched rendering of all that happened that seemingly idyllic season, Alice McDermott once again peers into the depths of everyday life with inimitable insight and grace. As Margaret Atwood wrote in The New York Review of Books, Child of My Heart is “richly textured [and] intricately woven . . . A work not only of, but about, the imagination.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250888372
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	06/06/2023
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	397,824
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Alice McDermott is the author of eight novels, including The Ninth Hour; Someone; After This; Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award; At Weddings and Wakes; and That Night—all published by FSG. That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and other publications. For more than two decades she was the Richard A. Macksey Professor for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the faculty at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. McDermott lives with her family outside Washington, D.C.

Hometown:

Bethesda, Maryland

Date of Birth:

June 27, 1953

Place of Birth:

Brooklyn, New York

Education:

B.A., State University of New York-Oswego, 1975; M.A., University of New Hampshire, 1978

Reading Group Guide

The questions and discussion topics that follow are intended to augment your group's reading of Alice McDermott's stunning new novel, Child of My Heart. Steeped in fantasy, love, and clever humor, Child of My Heart explores a torrent of emotions through the innocent eyes of the young and the weathered hearts of the aging. We hope this guide will help your group improve its understanding and appreciation of this exquisite story.

"I had in my care that summer four dogs, three cats, the Moran kids, Daisy, my eight-year-old cousin, and Flora, the toddler child of a local artist. There was also, for a while, a litter of wild rabbits, three of them, that had been left under our back steps" (p. 3). So begins Alice McDermott's bittersweet tale of one telling summer, when Theresa, a swanlike fifteen-year-old beauty, faces sadness and surprise as she leaves her fantasylike childhood behind and enters the shocking realm of maturity.

Theresa is the most sought-after baby-sitter and dog-walker in all of East Hampton, where her working-class Irish Catholic parents moved to expose her to wealthy potential husbands. Uncannily adored by children and animals alike, Theresa spends each summer day, with Daisy in tow, splendidly enchanting her bedraggled neighbors, the Moran kids; Flora, the angelic toddler of the local artist; Red Rover, Dr. Kaufman's half-witted golden retriever; and Rupert and Angus, Mr. and Mrs. Richardson's prim Scottish pups. Theresa creates a dreamlike haven for the children and pets where lollipops grow on trees, friendly ghosts visit in the night, and magical pink shoes banish bruises from poor Daisy's feet.

Theresa's own dream sequence is interrupted, though, as she discovers her sexual desires, the impending death of her favorite cousin, and the neglected longings for love of the deprived children for whom she cares.

1. How old is Theresa as she narrates her memoir? In what time period is the novel set? How were you able to figure this out?

2. Discuss McDermott's writing style. Why doesn't she separate the novel into chapters? Would you describe her language as poetic? Is it easy to understand?

3. Theresa describes herself as "pretty, intelligent, mature in speech although undeveloped physically (another plus), well immersed in my parents' old-fashioned Irish Catholic manners (inherited from their parents, who had spent their careers in service to this very breed of American rich), and, best of all, beloved by children and pets" (p. 14). Describe Theresa's other characteristics. How does her personality develop throughout the novel?

4. "He might well have been a genius, a famous artist, a man whose signature and doodles were valuable, but I was fifteen and pretty and I didn't doubt for a moment that I was the one with the advantage here" (p. 22). How does Theresa use her good looks to manipulate people? Does she do it intentionally?

5. Theresa acknowledges that her parents are "wary . . . of what they must have believed was the fast-approaching time of my fulfillment of their dream for me—of my absorption into that world they had taken so much trouble to place me on the threshold of" (p. 33). Describe Theresa's parents. Do you find them superficial or genuine? Are they good parents? How do they compare to the other parents in the novel? What does Theresa think of her parents?

6. How does Theresa's childhood compare to Daisy's, the Morans', the Kaufmans', and Flora's?

7. "I would have thought the housekeeper was too old to be included in such talk, just as, a few minutes ago, I might have presumed I was too young and Flora's mother too elegant to speak such a word" (pp. 64–65). What does Theresa think of adults? Does she consider herself one? Would you describe this book as a coming-of-age novel?

8. The name Theresa is prevalent in Catholic religious history. Do you think McDermott is making a reference to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a beautiful child of doting parents who entered the convent with special permission from the Vatican at age fifteen; or to Saint Teresa of Ávila, who partially recovered from a serious illness through the intercession of Saint Joseph; or to Mother Teresa, renowned caregiver of the sick and dying? McDermott references another saint as well—Saint Joseph, chaste husband of the Virgin Mary. Is McDermott referring to the artist with irony?

9. Does Theresa consider herself better than Ana and the cook even though they are all employees of the house?

10. "It was this watching that disturbed me, because in it I saw his belief that he could penetrate with his amused eyes the person I thought I was and find something more to his liking at the core" (p. 170). Theresa is acknowledging that the artist makes her feel as if she is no longer merely a pretty child, but a sexual being and a woman. Is Theresa afraid of growing up? Is she nervous about the sexual urgings developing between her and the artist? What does the artist find at her "core"?

11. Do you find the love scene between the artist and Theresa disturbing?

12. Bill, the young writer who visits Flora's father, asks Theresa, "Are you too young to know what's going on here? I mean, what the arrangement is" (p. 187). Is she too young? What is the arrangement?

13. McDermott draws a number of secondary characters into the story. Why are Petey, Bernadette, Dr. Kaufman, Mrs. Richardson, and all of the others so important? Do you relate to any one character the best?

14. How important is location to the novel? Are you able to visualize East Hampton? Can you imagine this novel set in any other location?

15. Why does Theresa keep Daisy's ailing health a secret? How does this make you feel?

16. "I wanted them scribbled over, torn up. Start over again. Draw a world where it simply doesn't happen, a world of only color, no form. Out of my head and more to my liking: a kingdom by the sea, eternal summer, a brush of fairy wings and all dark things banished, age, cruelty, pain, poor dogs, dead cats, harried parents, lonely children, all the coming griefs, all the sentimental, maudlin tales fashioned out of the death of children" (p. 180). Describe the emotions in this statement. Why does Theresa incorporate so much magic and fantasy into her life and the lives of the suffering children who surround her?

17. What is Theresa's vision of love?

18. Children are at the forefront of this novel. Why are McDermott's juvenile characters so captivating? Does she depict childhood realistically?

19. At the close of the novel, we've lost the two central characters—Daisy to death, and Theresa to adulthood. How do these two forms of loss differ?

Editorial Reviews

[A] wondrous new novel. . .Alice McDermott is a genius of quiet observation. . .Like Jane Austen, McDermott, one of our finest novelists writing today, is the master of a domain that in the hands of most writers would be limiting. . .Child of My Heart extends her artistic triumphs, and we should be grateful.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“A master. . .As good as any literary novelist writing today, and when I say that I include the big guns: Russell Banks, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison. . .All her books mirror the essential truths of existence so sure-handedly that they are neither comedies nor tragedies, but merely true.” —Anna Quindlen

“Has something of a classic about it. . .[Its] craftsmanship and its moral intelligence are as one. . ..Immaculate.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Richly textured, intricately woven. . .a work not only of, but about, the imagination.” —Margaret Atwood, New York Review of Books

“In a league of her own.” —People

“We have echoes and stirrings of Hardy, Shakespeare, Dickens, James, Beatrix Potter, Christina Rosetti... [Theresa] is a vessel containing a multitude of heroines, a transcendence of ethereal beauties who loved and live in the minds of their readers and inventors.” —Chicago Tribune

“[A] quietly enchanting novel, graced by McDermott's well-calibrated writing and observant eye...Filled with subtle truths and hard-won wisdom.” —The Charlotte Observer

From the Publisher

There is...something Jamesian about McDermott's style: this novel's craftsmanship and its moral intelligence are as one.

The New York Times Book Review

In the seductive, sumptuous world of Alice McDermott's fiction, life is always subdued by loss, love is always inseparable from ache and compassion is always the incomparable salvation, the counterweight to both circumstance and fate. In books like That Night , At Weddings and Wakes and Charming Billy , which won the National Book Award in 1998, McDermott created characters so real and so complex that one could hear them, see them and know them. With Child of My Heart , the author's fifth novel, McDermott introduces a cast of preternaturally precocious children who move about a seaside town with the sort of tenderness and disquieting foreknowledge that is denied to most preoccupied adults. Child of My Heart is startlingly touching, limned with both glimmer and shadow, sweetness and despair, premonition and memory. Its nostalgia is of the Irish variety, in which beauty and heartbreak are kept apart by very slender lines.

At first, this appears to be McDermott's simplest book. The core of the story plays out over the course of just a few days, for one thing, and the events are relayed in neat, nearly chronological order, for another. And yet so much happens to so many hearts, so much is revealed and then forsaken, and so much is finally placed at stake that this may well be McDermott's finest achievement. The novel's protagonist and narrator is a blue-eyed, black-haired beauty named Theresa—the only child of older, undereducated parents whose move to Long Island years before was precipitated by their desire to place their daughter in close proximity to wealth and status. By the time Theresa is ten, Theresa's mother is encouraging her to answer all thehelpmate ads. By the following summer, she is the most sought-after caretaker on the eastern tip of Long Island—loved by little girls and boys, by dogs and cats and rabbits.

When the book opens, Theresa is fifteen. Her eight-year-old cousin, whom she dubs Daisy Mae, has come to Long Island for an extended visit, and together the two administer to a growing entourage of animals and neighbors, not to mention the toddler daughter of an inscrutable and possibly famous local artist. They move from house to house, taking dogs out for walks, rescuing a dirty baby from her brothers' abandonment, saving the toddler Flora from the inconceivable neglect of her recently departed mother and her old (but still sexy) painter-father.

Theresa, of course, is the one in charge, but Daisy Mae, the shy and seemingly tentative child of an overcrowded household, soon reveals her own enormous capacity for improving the lives of others. They are a stunning duo, Theresa and Daisy Mae, and McDermott spins their story with aplomb, revealing them to the reader as they reveal themselves to each other. Theresa is never anything short of loving or imaginative. Daisy Mae is nothing less than the perfect recipient for Theresa's love. They grow sweetly conspiratorial in the stories they tell, in the games they make up, in the kindness they dollop onto others. They grow closer than most sisters ever do.

But there is something dark beneath this surface. There is something neither girl is saying. There is, for example, the unwanted, perhaps even dangerous, attention shown to them by lonely men. There is the chaos of the neighbors next door, so many filthy children, so much parental neglect. But most of all, Daisy Mae is not well, and this is no temporary sickness. There are bruises on her feet, on her back, on her arms. There is a fever in her skin. She is pale and anemic and she tires easily, and none of the adults are paying much attention. Theresa knows that it is up to her to tell the truth about her cousin's blooming bruises. Yet she is wise enough to recognize that if she tells an adult what she has seen, she will rob her cousin of the summer.

So Theresa finds a way to feed Daisy Mae St. Joseph's aspirins instead. She gets more liver and spinach into her cousin's diet. She takes her to the beach and begins what she calls a "peculiar therapy," hoping it will cure the bright blue feet: "I had Daisy stand at the shoreline," Theresa says, "where the waves could swirl around her feet, but not so far in that they could upset her balance. I told her to stand in one place while the water rushed around her ankles and her feet sank into the sand, and then, when the wave went out again, to pull her feet out, move a bit to the left or the right, and then let them sink in again." The love Theresa has for Daisy Mae is huge and overwhelming, but it is the way that Daisy Mae reciprocates that is most touching of all. Love this big can never survive, and McDermott is keen to that. What she gives us here is the dream and its denial, a novel that hurts as much as it heals, and that has all the weight and beauty of a classic.

It is all too beautiful, especially because McDermott, writing with her famous subtlety and style, makes us understand that the girls' innocence might be coming to its end. Child of My Heart is a book of astonishing craft and enormous heart. Line after line evokes and pricks. Truth after truth gets spoken. —Beth Kephart

In the seductive, sumptuous world of Alice McDermott's fiction, life is always subdued by loss, love is always inseparable from ache and compassion is always the incomparable salvation, the counterweight to both circumstance and fate. In books like That Night, At Weddings and Wakes and Charming Billy, which won the National Book Award in 1998, McDermott created characters so real and so complex that one could hear them, see them and know them. With Child of My Heart, the author's fifth novel, McDermott introduces a cast of preternaturally precocious children who move about a seaside town with the sort of tenderness and disquieting foreknowledge that is denied to most preoccupied adults. Child of My Heart is startlingly touching, limned with both glimmer and shadow, sweetness and despair, premonition and memory. Its nostalgia is of the Irish variety, in which beauty and heartbreak are kept apart by very slender lines.

At first, this appears to be McDermott's simplest book. The core of the story plays out over the course of just a few days, for one thing, and the events are relayed in neat, nearly chronological order, for another. And yet so much happens to so many hearts, so much is revealed and then forsaken, and so much is finally placed at stake that this may well be McDermott's finest achievement. The novel's protagonist and narrator is a blue-eyed, black-haired beauty named Theresa—the only child of older, undereducated parents whose move to Long Island years before was precipitated by their desire to place their daughter in close proximity to wealth and status. By the time Theresa is ten, Theresa's mother is encouraging her to answer all the helpmate ads. By thefollowing summer, she is the most sought-after caretaker on the eastern tip of Long Island—loved by little girls and boys, by dogs and cats and rabbits.

When the book opens, Theresa is fifteen. Her eight-year-old cousin, whom she dubs Daisy Mae, has come to Long Island for an extended visit, and together the two administer to a growing entourage of animals and neighbors, not to mention the toddler daughter of an inscrutable and possibly famous local artist. They move from house to house, taking dogs out for walks, rescuing a dirty baby from her brothers' abandonment, saving the toddler Flora from the inconceivable neglect of her recently departed mother and her old (but still sexy) painter-father.

Theresa, of course, is the one in charge, but Daisy Mae, the shy and seemingly tentative child of an overcrowded household, soon reveals her own enormous capacity for improving the lives of others. They are a stunning duo, Theresa and Daisy Mae, and McDermott spins their story with aplomb, revealing them to the reader as they reveal themselves to each other. Theresa is never anything short of loving or imaginative. Daisy Mae is nothing less than the perfect recipient for Theresa's love. They grow sweetly conspiratorial in the stories they tell, in the games they make up, in the kindness they dollop onto others. They grow closer than most sisters ever do.

But there is something dark beneath this surface. There is something neither girl is saying. There is, for example, the unwanted, perhaps even dangerous, attention shown to them by lonely men. There is the chaos of the neighbors next door, so many filthy children, so much parental neglect. But most of all, Daisy Mae is not well, and this is no temporary sickness. There are bruises on her feet, on her back, on her arms. There is a fever in her skin. She is pale and anemic and she tires easily, and none of the adults are paying much attention. Theresa knows that it is up to her to tell the truth about her cousin's blooming bruises. Yet she is wise enough to recognize that if she tells an adult what she has seen, she will rob her cousin of the summer.

So Theresa finds a way to feed Daisy Mae St. Joseph's aspirins instead. She gets more liver and spinach into her cousin's diet. She takes her to the beach and begins what she calls a "peculiar therapy," hoping it will cure the bright blue feet: "I had Daisy stand at the shoreline," Theresa says, "where the waves could swirl around her feet, but not so far in that they could upset her balance. I told her to stand in one place while the water rushed around her ankles and her feet sank into the sand, and then, when the wave went out again, to pull her feet out, move a bit to the left or the right, and then let them sink in again." The love Theresa has for Daisy Mae is huge and overwhelming, but it is the way that Daisy Mae reciprocates that is most touching of all. Love this big can never survive, and McDermott is keen to that. What she gives us here is the dream and its denial, a novel that hurts as much as it heals, and that has all the weight and beauty of a classic.

It is all too beautiful, especially because McDermott, writing with her famous subtlety and style, makes us understand that the girls' innocence might be coming to its end. Child of My Heart is a book of astonishing craft and enormous heart. Line after line evokes and pricks. Truth after truth gets spoken.

Beth Kephart

There is something almost too good to be true about Theresa, the introspective and unusually perceptive narrator who recalls the summer of her 15th year in this engaging, taut novel by McDermott (Charming Billy). Theresa's Irish-American "well-read but undereducated" parents have little money but plenty of foresight; when they see that their only daughter will be beautiful, they move to East Hampton, Long Island, summer playground of New York City's richest, in the hopes that Theresa's beauty will eventually win her a wealthy husband. Because she has a way with children and animals, her parents have long encouraged her to baby-sit and pet-sit as a way to meet and impress the right people. This particular summer, her favorite cousin, eight-year-old Daisy, tags along as Theresa cares for dogs, cats, neighbor kids and a toddler named Flora, the only child of a 70-year-old womanizing artist and his fourth trophy wife. Entirely self-involved, the artist does manage to look away from his canvas and mistress long enough to notice Theresa, who finds his attentions exciting. Early on, Theresa discovers a tragic secret of Daisy's that she decides to keep to herself, which gives the summer and the book a wistful, melancholy air. As the girls corral their charges, Theresa offers half-innocent, half-ironic comments on the vanities and topsy-turvy family lives of her employers. This is another charmer from McDermott; it's evocative, gently funny and resonant with a sense of impending loss, as all stories of youthful summers must be. There's a whisper of maudlin sentimentality throughout, but Theresa is so likable, and her observations so acute, that one easily forgives it. (Nov. 25) Forecast: A tartly luscious lollipop-studded jacket makes this an enticing option for readers craving a taste of summer. McDermott fans will be thoroughly satisfied. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Unfolding like the waves that roll onto the shore of the East End's beaches, this story about 15-year-old Theresa, the only child of understanding if somewhat absent parents, is threaded with foreboding. Theresa, who lives year 'round in East Hampton, narrates a summer she spends with younger cousin Daisy, who is visiting. Poised and mature, Theresa longs to comfort and care for children-to be surrounded by others so as not to be alone. Her days are spent working as a pet and babysitter for various residents, part-time or otherwise. Mostly, she watches the two-year-old daughter of a famous, 70-year-old painter, with Daisy of course in tow. The narrative soon takes on an ominous feel as mysterious bruises start to appear on Daisy's legs and passionate glances from the painter linger on Theresa a little too long. National Book Award winner McDermott's prose is even and elegant, and the complex character of Theresa offers subtle emotion imbued with haunting prescience. Though some of the details about being a local in the Hamptons are slightly off the mark, McDermott's true-to-life evocation of the lazy, sun-soaked summers in such a heaven (albeit a troubled heaven) outweighs this deficit. A nice addition to any literary collection. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/02.]-Rachel Collins, "Library Journal" Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Adult/High School-Theresa, 15, is poised to be a heartbreaker, but she is also the ultimate caregiver. In early childhood, she left Brooklyn with her blue-collar parents for the fashionable Hamptons on Long Island, and her obvious beauty was to be her ticket to a prosperous marriage and easy life. Seemingly oblivious to her potential, Theresa moves serenely through the summer, gathering small animals and children in need of love and comfort. Prime among them is her cousin Daisy, eight, the middle child in a large, mostly male Irish family from Queens, who is so compliant that she seems lost among her siblings. Theresa invites this child of her heart for what is to be a luxurious and indulgent summer by the sea but, immediately upon her arrival, realizes that Daisy is not well. While short on plot, this deceptively simple story about a few days in the early '60s carries an emotional impact that lingers after the novel is finished. Theresa's intuitively kind treatment of her charges is a model of nurturance, and her brief liaison with an elderly painter is a jarring indication of the unplanned path her life might take. The teen's character is fully formed, her clueless parents are likable, and the other inhabitants of the resort are well portrayed, too; the whole is a perfect jewel of exposition. Readers will respond to Theresa and be awed by her understanding of the adults around her.-Susan H. Woodcock, Fairfax County Public Library, Chantilly, VA Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

After the National Book Award–winning Charming Billy (1998), McDermott returns to the familiar turf of her earlier fiction: East Hampton and the inner life of a precocious girl one crucial summer. Theresa lives a quietly secure life as the only child of doting, middle-aged Irish Catholic parents with upwardly mobile aspirations. By the summer she is 15, Theresa--the name’s saintly resonance may strike readers as a bit obvious--is not only lovely but wise and kind as well, adored by the young children and animals she cares for. In contrast, her eight-year-old cousin, "Poor Daisy," is mousy, pale, and generally overlooked among a cramped houseful of siblings in Queens Village. Sorry for Daisy and also sensing a special kinship of imagination, Theresa invites the younger girl to East Hampton for the summer. Daisy arrives with pink plastic sandals she won’t take off. When Theresa stumbles across the reason--bruises on Daisy’s feet and body she can’t explain--a sense of foreboding falls like a shadow of death across the summer. But the foreboding is sexual as well. Theresa and Daisy spend most of their days babysitting the two-year-old daughter of a famous artist. When his much younger wife decamps one morning after letting Theresa know she may be the painter’s next conquest, Theresa finds herself both repulsed and attracted. Day by day, as Daisy’s health deteriorates, Theresa’s sexuality ripens. Meanwhile, the ever-observant Theresa is silent witness to the tragedies rippling under her community’s placid surface: neglected children desperate for affection; a divorced father whose longing for his children almost perverts him; the "tweedy" dowager whose overbearing cheerfulness masks maternalgrief. Though hobbled by a tendency toward sentimentality and self-consciousness, McDermott sculpts her small story with a meticulous eye for the telling detail and transcendent metaphor. We know what’s coming, but so do the characters--that’s part of this tale’s bittersweet power. Author tour

Kirkus Reviews