Someone: A Novel

by Alice McDermott

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Alice McDermott’s ability to write a universal experience is unmatched, and here she does it again, bringing this story to life around a cast of characters that brim with genuine human emotion. This is an exploration of feeling that takes its time to say what it needs to say.

A fully realized portrait of one woman's life in all its complexity, by the National Book Award–winning author

An ordinary life—its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion—lived by an ordinary woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott's extraordinary return, seven years after the publication of After This. Scattered recollections—of childhood, adolescence, motherhood, old age—come together in this transformative narrative, stitched into a vibrant whole by McDermott's deft, lyrical voice.
Our first glimpse of Marie is as a child: a girl in glasses waiting on a Brooklyn stoop for her beloved father to come home from work. A seemingly innocuous encounter with a young woman named Pegeen sets the bittersweet tone of this remarkable novel. Pegeen describes herself as an "amadan," a fool; indeed, soon after her chat with Marie, Pegeen tumbles down her own basement stairs. The magic of McDermott's novel lies in how it reveals us all as fools for this or that, in one way or another.
Marie's first heartbreak and her eventual marriage; her brother's brief stint as a Catholic priest, subsequent loss of faith, and eventual breakdown; the Second World War; her parents' deaths; the births and lives of Marie's children; the changing world of her Irish-American enclave in Brooklyn—McDermott sketches all of it with sympathy and insight. This is a novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived; a crowning achievement by one of the finest American writers at work today.

A Publishers Weekly Best Fiction Book of the Year

A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2013
A New York Times Notable Book of 2013
A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of 2013
An NPR Best Book of 2013

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250888389
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	07/04/2023
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	1,077,177
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Alice McDermott is the author of six previous novels, including After This; Child of My Heart; Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award; and At Weddings and Wakes, all published by FSG. That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. 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

An homage to the extraordinary transformations experienced in an ordinary life, Someone is the highly anticipated seventh novel from the award-winning author Alice McDermott, beloved for her deft portraits of kinship and memory.

When we first glimpse Marie, who narrates Someone, she is a child in glasses waiting for her father on a Brooklyn stoop. In poignant scenes, Marie experiences powerful transitions, though she stays close to home: bittersweet encounters with an awkward young neighbor named Pegeen, who describes herself as a fool; the heartache and hope of adolescence; her brother's brief stint as a Catholic priest; and rediscovered courage when she takes on her mother's role, becoming a wife with a family of her own. Woven through with McDermott's tender, lyrical voice, this masterly work is a crowning achievement by one of America's finest writers.

This guide is designed to enrich your discussion of Someone. We hope that the following questions will enhance your reading group's experience of this mesmerizing novel.

1. Why does the memory of Pegeen resonate so profoundly for Marie? Is there a similar story from your youth that has had a lasting effect on your life?

2. What does Marie's mother try to teach her about becoming a fulfilled woman? What exceptional qualities does Marie's father possess? How does their marriage shape Marie's vision of her future?

3. Discuss the novel's Brooklyn neighborhood as if it were a character. What are its most colorful attributes? How is it transformed over the years while Marie grows up? Do its inhabitants support one another, or is their gossip judgmental? Think about their speculation over the gender of Dora Ryan's spouse and Bill Corrigan's frailties.

4. Why does Marie resist her mother's attempts to urge her to adulthood, from how to read a recipe to the importance of finding a job?

5. How is Marie able to look past the tragic death of Mrs. Hanson and focus on the loveliness of Gerty and her baby sister, Durna? Throughout her life, what beauty does Marie find in mothering?

6. What is the role of fate versus free will in Someone? What did Gabe seek and find in religion? What truths about faith did he eventually learn to embrace?

7. What did Walter Hartnett ultimately get out of his time with Marie? Was she naïve to fall for him, or was he powerfully persuasive? What made Tom Commeford a good match for her?

8. What does Marie discover about life by working for Mr. Fagin?

9. Discuss the story of Margaret Tuohy. How was Marie affected by the bishop's choice of elegant burial clothes for his sister? What did the experience show Marie about the role of the survivor?

10. As Gabe tells the story of the woman at his first parish who bought mints before attending church each week, what is revealed about the importance of avoiding assumptions? How do perceptions and misperceptions shape the novel's storyline?

11. What is the effect of the novel's first-person narration? As Marie narrates her life, what changes do you notice in her view of the world—literal ones, as she endures eye surgeries, and symbolic ones?

12. Discuss Marie's relationship with her own children. What does she do differently from her parents? What traditions does she carry on? How does McDermott capture the revelations that life and loss bring?

13. How does the depiction of Irish identity and family life in Someone compare to that in similar worlds you've explored in other novels by Alice McDermott?

Editorial Reviews

In this deceptively simple tour de force, McDermott (Charming Billy, winner of the National Book Award) lays bare the keenly observed life of Marie Commeford, an ordinary woman whose compromised eyesight makes her both figuratively and literally unable to see the world for what it is. When we meet her on the steps of her Brooklyn townhouse, she’s a bespectacled seven-year-old waiting for her father; McDermott then leaps ahead, when Marie, pregnant with her first child, recalls collapsing at a deli counter and the narrative plunges us into a world where death is literally just around the corner, upending the safety and comfort of her neighborhood; “In a few months’ time, I would be at death’s door, last rites and all,” she relates. We follow Marie through the milestones of her life, shadowed by her elder brother, Gabe, who mysteriously leaves the priesthood for which everyone thought he was destined. The story of Marie’s life unfolds in a nonlinear fashion: McDermott describes the loss of Marie’s father, her first experience with intimacy, her first job (in a funeral parlor of all places), her marriage, the birth of a child. We come to feel for this unremarkable woman, whose vulnerability makes her all the more winning—and makes her worthy of our attention. And that’s why McDermott, a three-time Pulitzer nominee, is such an exceptional writer: in her hands, an uncomplicated life becomes singularly fascinating, revealing the heart of a woman whose defeats make us ache and whose triumphs we cheer. Marie’s vision (and ours) eventually clears, and she comes to understand that what she so often failed to see lay right in front of her eyes. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Company. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

An excellent performance. Kate Reading makes the range of emotions entirely believable.” —Publisher's Weekly

“McDermott's nuanced writing turns the mundane into poetry. Kate Reading's narration fits perfectly.” —AudioFile

“Kate Reading narrates the story in a smooth, easy voice and takes great care to match McDermott's pacing and to highlight her lyrical writing. She has created a fitting ode to McDermott's luminous novel.” —Booklist

“In this deceptively simple tour de force, McDermott . . . lays bare the keenly observed life of Marie Commeford, an ordinary woman whose compromised eyesight makes her both figuratively and literally unable to see the world for what it is . . . We come to feel for this unremarkable woman, whose vulnerability makes her all the more winning—and makes her worthy of our attention. And that's why McDermott, a three-time Pulitzer nominee, is such an exceptional writer: in her hands, an uncomplicated life becomes singularly fascinating, revealing the heart of a woman whose defeats make us ache and whose triumphs we cheer. Marie's vision (and ours) eventually clears, and she comes to understand that what she so often failed to see lay right in front of her eyes.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)

“One of the author's most trenchant explorations into the heart and soul of the 20th-century Irish-American family . . . Marie's straightforward narration is interrupted with occasional jumps back and forward in time that create both a sense of foreboding and continuity as well as a mediation on the nature of sorrow . . . Marie and Gabe are compelling in their basic goodness, as is McDermott's elegy to a vanished world.” —Kirkus

“Readers who love refined, unhurried, emotionally fluent fiction will rejoice at National Book Award–winner McDermott's return. McDermott . . . is a master of hidden intensities, intricate textures, spiked dialogue, and sparkling wit. We first meet Marie at age seven, when she's sitting on the stoop in her tight-knit, Irish-Catholic Brooklyn neighborhood, waiting for her father to come home from work. Down the street, boys play stickball, consulting with dapper Billy, their blind umpire, an injured WWI vet. Tragedies and scandals surge through the enclave, providing rough initiations into sex and death . . . A marvel of subtle modulations, McDermott's keenly observed, fluently humane, quietly enthralling novel of conformity and selfhood, of ‘lace-curtain pretensions' as shield and camouflage, celebrates family, community, and ‘the grace of a shared past.'” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred)

From the Publisher

All people are interesting if we only know their story. When readers first meet Marie Commeford, she is seven years old, waiting on the steps for her father to return to their Brooklyn home. From a chance encounter with a hapless neighbor girl that same day to her parents' deaths, through World War II, Marie's first sexual encounter, marriage and children, to her brother's sudden departure from the priesthood, this novel moves from one emotionally rich touch point to the next in a nonlinear narrative that echoes memory itself. Winner of the National Book Award for Charming Billy, novelist McDermott continues to captivate readers by delving into ordinary, daily life with skill and compassion, showing us that we can't always see at the time what will be meaningful in our lives. VERDICT While McDermott's is a quiet style, fans of her earlier work will be thrilled to come across this simple, bittersweet story that will find appeal among readers of Alice Munro and Ann Patchett. [See Prepub Alert, 3/11/13.]—Gwen Vredevoogd, Marymount Univ. Libs., Arlington, VA

Library Journal

McDermott’s nuanced writing turns the mundane into poetry. Kate Reading’s narration fits perfectly as she weaves her way through this story of an ordinary person living an ordinary life. Marie is an Irish-American girl with severe vision problems who struggles to see and make sense of her world, inside and out. Her challenges lead her, and the listener, through a meandering plot that requires close attention to keep hold of the thread of the story. Reading keeps a steady pace as Marie knits the past and the present into a life of loneliness, love, and loss. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2013 - AudioFile

McDermott's brief seventh novel (Child of My Heart, 2002, etc.) follows seven decades of a Brooklyn woman's modest life to create one of the author's most trenchant explorations into the heart and soul of the 20th-century Irish-American family. Sitting on the stoop of her apartment building, 7-year-old Marie watches her 1920s Brooklyn neighborhood through the thick glasses she already wears--her ability to see or missee those around her is one of the novel's overriding metaphors. She revels in the stories of her neighbors, from the tragedy of Billy Corrigan, blinded in the war, to the great romance of the Chebabs' Syrian-Irish marriage. Affectionately nicknamed the "little pagan" in contrast to her studious, spiritual older brother Gabe, Marie feels secure and loved within her own family despite her occasional battles of will against her mother. Cozy in their narrow apartment, her parents are proud that Marie's father has a white-collar job as a clerk, and they have great hopes for Gabe, who is soon off to seminary to study for the priesthood. Marie's Edenic childhood shatters when her adored father dies. In fact, death is never far from the surface of these lives, particularly since Maries works as a young woman with the local undertaker, a job that affords many more glimpses into her neighbors and more storytelling. By then, Gabe has left the priesthood, claiming it didn't suit him and that his widowed mother needs him at home. Is he a failure or a quiet saint? After her heart is broken by a local boy who dumps her for a richer girl, Marie marries one of Gabe's former parishioners, has children and eventually moves away from the neighborhood. Gabe remains. Marie's straightforward narration is interrupted with occasional jumps back and forward in time that create both a sense of foreboding and continuity as well as a meditation on the nature of sorrow. There is no high drama here, but Marie and Gabe are compelling in their basic goodness, as is McDermott's elegy to a vanished world.

Kirkus Reviews