At Weddings and Wakes (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Alice Mcdermott
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: Mid-twentieth century
- Setting: Brooklyn and Long Island, New York
- Principal Characters: Mary “Momma” Towne, Veronica Towne, Agnes Towne, May Towne Castle, Lucy Dailey, Bobby, Margaret, Maryanne Dailey, Bob Dailey, Fred Castle
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: 1960’s, Family or family life, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Mothers, Parents and children, New York City, Sisters, Death or dying, Tragedy, Catholics or Catholic Church, Separation, Weddings
- Locales: Brooklyn, NY, Long Island, NY
The opening sentence of At Weddings and Wakes, a densely detailed 127-word description of a woman shutting the front door of her house and going out with her three children, serves notice that this is no conventional work of bare-bones realism. Instead, it is a family novel as prose poem, depending for its effects not on the piling up of quotidian detail, not even on plot in the conventional sense, but on finely articulated language, the cumulative effect of image patterns, a structure which at first may seem random but which in fact is intricately ordered. Everything is...
[The entire page is 2664 words long]
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