The Ninth Hour
Book Feature - The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott
Book Feature - The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott
HBL Note: Why should you read this book? Check out the list of awards and recognitions this book has received so far. Then add on the awards the author has received. Then, if you still aren’t convinced, read the book’s description. I wish I had time in my lineup to squeeze this one in, I think it will be one of those books that stick with you long after you turn the last page.
Book Feature - The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott
From the publisher:
From National Book Award-winner and Pulitzer Prize Finalist Alice McDermott, The Ninth Hour is the critically-acclaimed “haunting and vivid portrait of an Irish Catholic clan in early twentieth century America” (The Associated Press).
One of TIME Magazine's Top Ten Novels of the Year
A 2017 Kirkus Prize Finalist
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book
On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens a gas tap in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove―to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his pregnant wife―that “the hours of his life . . . belonged to himself alone.” In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Saviour, an aging nun, a Little Nursing Sister of the Sick Poor, appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child.
In Catholic Brooklyn in the early part of the twentieth century, decorum, superstition, and shame collude to erase the man’s brief existence, and yet his suicide, though never spoken of, reverberates through many lives―testing the limits and the demands of love and sacrifice, of forgiveness and forgetfulness, even through multiple generations. Rendered with remarkable delicacy, heart, and intelligence, Alice McDermott’s The Ninth Hour is a crowning achievement of one of the finest American writers at work today.
Book Feature - The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott
