In Catholic Brooklyn in the early part of the twentieth century, decorum, superstition, and shame collude to erase a 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.
Alongside her marvellous descriptions of unbeautiful bodies is an intense lyricism . McDermott is so attentive to atmospheres, glances, the quietest moments that provoke profound shifts in a character's world ... Her new book unfolds without sentimentality or pity, but with a frankness of gaze that elevates her characters rather than diminishes them. Mercy, it seems, doesn't always take the forms we might imagine Molly McCloskey Guardian 20171021