Charming Billy by
Alice McDermott

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"Everyone loved him. If you knew Billy at all, then you loved him." The late Billy Lynch's family and friends, a party of forty-seven, gather at a small bar and grill somewhere in the Bronx to remember better times in good company, and to redeem the pleasure of a drink or two from the miserable thing that a drink had become in Billy's life. His widow, Maeve, is there, of course, and everyone admires the way she is holding up, just as they always admired the way she cared for Billy after the alcohol had ruined him. But one cannot think of Billy Lynch's life, one's own relentless affection for him, without saying at some point, "There was that girl. The Irish girl." And one can't help but think that the real story of his life lay there. For on Long Island one summer years and years ago, Billy fell in love with a beautiful young Irish woman who had come to America to work for a wealthy family from Park Avenue. Billy wanted to marry Eva, even gave her a ring. But she went back to Ireland to care for her relatives, promising to return; and then Dennis, Billy's cousin had to break the news: Eva had died of pneumonia. Billy Lynch never got over it. Anybody who knew him would tell you so. Billy began courting Maeve not long after, but for the rest of their lives together he, she, and Dennis shared a hidden, twisted grief. It falls to Dennis's daughter to find the truth in their story, and as she pushes deeper and deeper into Billy's past, she reveals how the consequences of Billy's love for Eva eventually bound them all together in ways they hardly could have imagined.
Alice McDermott is one of America's most gifted and cherished novelists, lyrically precise in her language, fiercely observant of detail, attentive to the faintest traces of affection and regret. In this, her fourth novel, she gives us the story of Billy Lynch within the matrix of a tightly knit Irish community, in a voice that is resonant and full of deep feeling. Charming Billy is a masterpiece about the unbreakable bonds of memory and desire. Alice McDermott is the author of At Weddings and Wakes (1992), a New York Times bestseller; That Night (1987); and A Bigamist's daughter (1982). She lives with her family outside Washington, D.C.

Here's what the members of the Reading Group based at our Raheny branch library think of Charming Billy:

Charming Billy is a charming novel. Alice McDermott tells the story of Irish American, Billy Lynch, whose romantic dreams are shattered when his girlfriend, Eva, fails to return from Ireland to America for their wedding. She has accepted his ring and the money he has sent, but she has ceased answering his letters. The book opens with a gathering of the Lynch clan after Billy's funeral. His early death is the result of years of alcohol abuse, his drinking problems a symptom of unfulfilled dreams. The author writes brilliantly of second and third generation Irish living in New York, who continue to cling to the old traditions, their loyalty to church and family, their penchant for Irish ballads. If I have one criticism of the work it is of Ms McDermott's research. Clonmel is a town in Co. Tipperary, not Co. Wicklow and I doubt if one would have found 'Earl Gray' tea in a roadside café in rural Ireland of the 50's.
(Member of Raheny Library Reading Group)