One of many great things about reading is getting inside the head of someone whose experiences are so different from yours. Really, I love that about reading. But when you read an incredibly talented author who apparently has actually met all the members of your extended family and can describe what they eat, the jokes they tell, and the way as restaurant diners they put "...hands in laps to make the poor man's job easier as he reached between their shoulders," well, that is a mind-blower.
Which is to say that McDermott's book is a small, beautiful story of an Irish Catholic family in mid-century, and the way that faith, alcohol and dreams touch that family, and lots of others as well.
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