Clair Wills
Walls of Silence
Alice McDermott’s eighth novel, The Ninth Hour, is billed by her publisher as a story about three generations of an Irish immigrant family living in Brooklyn in the early part of the 20th century. It is certainly set in Brooklyn and does feature mostly first- and second-generation Irish immigrant characters, but their Catholicism and their gender matter far more than their Irishness. This is a novel about women, and the relationships between women. McDermott teases out the fraught bonds between mother and daughter but also between ‘sisters’: much of the plot centres on a community of nuns, the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor, dedicated to caring for New York’s needy population. In fact, the Brooklyn McDermott reveals contains very few traditional families. She is interested in how women create alternative networks, and different kinds of relationships, in order to survive.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency
'We have all twenty-nine of her Barsetshire novels, and whenever a certain longing reaches critical mass we read all twenty-nine again, straight through.'
Patricia T O'Conner on her love for Angela Thirkell. (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad