Both the ordinary and the unordinary hold sway in Someone: The book tells the story of an ordinary woman without a novel's typical crisis, climax, resolution, and denouement. Author Alice McDermott organizes vignettes from her protagonist's 70 years in seemingly random fashion.
Typical of McDermott's protagonists, narrator Marie is an Irish Catholic. Her story begins at age 7 in 1930s Brooklyn, where she lives with her Irish immigrant parents and older brother in a small apartment. We hear about Marie's first romantic heartbreak, her father's death, her job, marriage and pregnancy, her brother's short-lived priesthood and nervous breakdown, and the family's move to the suburbs, but not in linear sequence. Like memories that pop up in no particular order, an event from childhood might follow one from old age. Everyday occurrences such as family meals are as closely rendered as milestones, thus elevating the significance of the unexceptional details of life.
Marie undergoes no dramatic transformation, but McDermott keeps readers interested in her and persuaded that a life is precious, no matter how ordinary.
Home
My
reviews
My
friends' reviews