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Charming Billy (1998)

Charming Billy (1998)

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Rating
3.4 of 5 Votes: 4
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ISBN
2264031115 (ISBN13: 9782264031112)
Language
English

About book Charming Billy (1998)

Charming Billy is a novel very much rooted in time & place. It is a book that frames the particular, even the ordinary with lilting & uplifting language rather than attempting to portray things that are broadly-based or complex. In reading this novel for a local book discussion group I was reminded that Walter Kerr the late New York Times theater critic once referred to a particular American musical as a "very well-played minor league night of theater." While it may have seemed a very dismissive review, I took it to mean that while those responsible for the effort did not seem to aim all that high and while the musical might not have an enduring quality, those who saw it, myself among them, were very pleased with what they saw & heard, essentially getting their money's worth for a night on Broadway even if it did not represent a life-changing experience. Alice McDermott's novel captures the WWII & post-war era of New York neighborhoods when one's identity came in large part from the nearest church or synagogue, corner bakery or saloon and families were close-knit and much less likely to represent ethnic or geographic diversity than is true today. One commuted by streetcar or subway and if gainfully employed, often stayed with a particular job until either laid off or retired. The author portrays the very particular sights, sounds & modes of connection within an insular, mostly Irish community. For example, a woman named Maeve has her life changed "when she entered Mr. Holtzman's shoe store looking for size fours, placing her stockinged foot in the palm of Holtzman's hand". Something seemingly so commonplace is covered very evocatively by McDermott's prose.There is a certain lack of clarity about some of the relationships between characters and a certain presence of stereotyping behavior, as with the primary character of Billy for example but these are minor imperfections. "Charming Billy" is confronted by and has to endure betrayal by someone he dearly loves and the story unfolds by gradually revealing the circumstances of that betrayal via a lie that is initially meant to protect him. The story itself is not as remarkable as the language employed to portray it. Here is just one example of McDermott's prose:In the arc of an unremarkable life, whose triumphs are small & personal, whose trials are ordinary enough, as tempered in their pain as in their resolution to pain, the claim of exclusivity in love requires both a certain kind of courage & a good deal of delusion. Those of us who claim exclusivity in love do so with a liar's courage: there are a hundred opportunities, thousands over the years, for a sense of falsehood to seep in, for all that we imagine as inevitable to become arbitrary & for our history together to reveal itself as only a matter of happenstance, with nothing irrepeatable or irreplacable. This is a novel that lacks heroes, heroines or dynamic characters but focuses instead on ordinary folks dealing with the many misunderstandings and failures to connect that occur during their lives, enduring disappointments & the impermanence of existence while also attempting to make the best of what fate has dealt them.

First of all, Billy's family and friends have gathered in a Bronx bar for the first 24 pages of the book - thats it! Then they go to the widow's house for a few chapters, and the rest of it is a bunch of flashbacks. Secondly - Billy was a romantic? A romantic? Billy was a lousy drunk whose family continually tried to get help for him which he threw back in their face.The majority of this story is told from the point of view of Billy's cousin Dennis' daughter, whom is never named, as she is relaying what happened at the funeral to her husband. I think. Since Dennis' daughter is the one telling the story, Dennis is involved in most parts making me think the title of this book should have been Patient Dennis.The book really isn't that long, but I felt like it was taking me forever to read! Especially the parts narrated from Billy's widow, Maeve's house. To me it felt like there was a severe lack of emotion that you would expect to be there during a funeral. McDermott drops a bomb in the beginning of the story regarding Billy's first love, Eva, that just doesn't seem very realistic - maybe because I figured it out all on my own? The whole thing made Billy seem pathetic (more than I already thought he was). I didn't find any of the characters particularly likable in this novel, except for Dennis, throughout the years Maeve had called Dennis every time (almost every night) that Billy was too drunk to handle - making both her and Billy seem irresponsible and childish. While Dennis was saintly enough to come over and help, he was really a catalyst in Billy's drinking because of it.The bright side of this story for me was that Maeve and Billy lived in Bayside, Queens - where I live! But that was it. McDermott didn't give any details about any of the locations on Long Island or Queens that would make you think she had ever even visited the area. Don't get me wrong this wasn't the most horrible book I have ever ready, but I don't feel any better for reading it, thats for sure.

Do You like book Charming Billy (1998)?

This is the story of Billy Lynch, an Irish American from Queens, NY and his many family members and friends. Billy was jilted as a young man and never quite got over the pain, as he drank himself to death many years later. The story was told from the point of view of Billy's cousin Dennis' daughter, which is really confusing and difficult to figure out until at least halfway through the story.I noticed that both descriptions of this novel (the one on Goodreads and the one on the back cover of the book itself) describe the book differently than I would have--almost as though the person who wrote it hadn't read it!That said, I thought the writing was beautiful. I am always a fan of flowery prose! The problem is that the writer was all over the place with the story. At times, the voice seemed to change. I often found myself re-reading sections because I felt like I was missing something. From the way the book cover sounded, I thought that Billy's friends and relatives were going to take turns telling stories about his life and that each person may have had a different take on things. The story skipped around so much, I had a hard time following it.I am sad because this book had the potential to be one of my all-time favorites, containing: ethnic flare, family dysfunction and lovely prose. However, the way the story is told falls a bit short, leaving the reader quite a bit unfulfilled.
—Bobbi Woods

Charming Billy is what happens when you stop in the library on a whim, before you have registered at Goodreads and before you have an idea of what you want to read, and you find the book with the pretty cover, in this case, the one with a shiny golden seal that says "National Book Award Winner." It is similar to the way in which I shop for wine. And certainly every bottle of wine has something to commend it--alcohol, at least. So, too, does this book have facets to commend it: clean writing, easy reading, interesting use of the narrator, poetry-like repetition of certain phrases and words throughout, alcohol. But truly, as a hard drinker from hard-drinking stock, I STILL did not find the characters to be resonant. Perhaps part of the problem lies in the fact that the dialogue was unbelievable. Here is a tiny sample from near the end of the book, which coincided with my realization that a large part of what was bugging me about the book was the unbelievability of the dialogue."She chose him, and as far as I can see he fit her to a T. Her old man all over again. Someone to maneuver, to shore up. An alcoholic with a shadow across his heart. An alcoholic because he had a shadow across his heart, the way I see it...I don't begrudge her her tears, of course, but I wonder, too. Would she have known what to do with a sober man, with the full force of the affection of a sober man who'd never loved another?"Um, do you talk like that? I certainly do not. I wish that Ms. McDermott would trust her readers enough to understand her meaning from regular dialogue.
—Audrey

McDermott, Alice. CHARMING BILLY. (1998). *****.tAn excellent novel about first loves and family which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1998. The story is told told by the daughter of one of the main characters, with an understanding that seems to grow with each advancing year. We first meet Billy Lynch at his funeral. We don’t meet him, actually, but we meet who his friends thought he was during his life. All his friends knew that he had died because of drink – on purpose. When Billy was a young man, he spent a summer at a friend’s house in the Hamptons; a modest house that had been left to his friend. It was heaven to Billy. While there, he met a girl from Ireland – Eva – with whom he fell instantly in love. As the summer progressed, he was finally able to tell her of his love, and asked her to stay on. She tole him that she couldn’t because of things back in Ireland – her parents, her job, etc., but let him know that she felt the same way about him as he felt about her. Billy said that he would save up his money and send her enough to come back soon so that they could be married. He promptly got a second job, and slowly accumulated enough money for Eva to sail back to the States. After having sent the money on, communication between Eva and Billy died down and finally stopped, although Billy kept up his end of writing to Eva at least once a week. After about a year or so of not hearing from her, Belly’s friend told him that Eva had caught pneumonia and died. Billy was crushed. It was obvious that Eva had been the center of his life and that all of his planning included both of them in the future. After several years, and the onset of a stronger and stronger drinking habit, Billy married another woman. They got along pretty well, but the marriage lacked the spark that everyone thought it should have had. When Billy’s drinking was almost out of control, he agreed to travel to Ireland with the neighborhood priest and several other members of the Irish-American community to “take the pledge.” Once there, he travelled to see Eva’s parents, and learned that Eva was still alive. It seems that his friend told Billy she was dead to protect him from the fact that she had married over there and bought a petrol station. After thirty years of thinking she was gone, Billy was inwardly heartbroken, and saw his life as a great failure. All of this story is interspersed with exquisite pictures of the Irish fraternity in the U.S., the neighborhood in New York that Billy lived in. It was full of relatives, both close and distant. Those that weren’t related were all named “Paddy,” but were brought over to America as fast as they could be. The author’s portrait of Billy is sad without being maudlin, and the attitude of his friends is the same. They only wanted to help, but, instant, had taken a life away from one of their best in the process. Highly recommended.
—Tony

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