Charming Billy

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 our 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 American 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.