SOMEONE

An ordinary life--its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion--lived by an ordinary, but unf orgettable woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott's extraordinary seventh novel. We first glimpse Marie Commeford as a child: a girl in thick glasses observing her pre-Depression world from a Brooklyn stoop. Through her first heartbreak and eventua l marriage/ her delicate brother's brief stint as a Catholic priest and his emotional breakdown/ her career as a funeral director's consoling...[Read more]