The Ninth Hour
by Alice McDermott
- New
- Hardcover
- Condition
- New/Fine
- ISBN 10
- 1250192749
- ISBN 13
- 9781250192745
- Seller
-
Akron, Ohio, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens a gas tap in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove—to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his pregnant wife—that "the hours of his life . . . belonged to himself alone." In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Saviour, an aging nun, a Little Nursing Sister of the Sick Poor, appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child.
In Catholic Brooklyn in the early part of the twentieth century, decorum, superstition, and shame collude to erase the 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. Rendered with remarkable delicacy, heart, and intelligence, Alice McDermott's The Ninth Hour is a crowning achievement of one of the finest American writers at work today.
Reviews
I had read a short story based on this novel in The New Yorker a year or so ago, and Sr. St. Saviour won my heart. Walking home after a long day begging for funds for her order of nursing sisters, feet aching and longing to empty her bursting bladder, the 60-something-year-old nun enters unbidden a smoky building where a young man has just committed suicide by turning on the gas. Sister determines to lead the way forward for his surviving wife, Annie, and young daughter, Sally. Sally becomes the convent pet after her mother takes a job working with Sr. Illuminata in the laundry in the basement of a convent set in the heart of mid-century Brooklyn. It is Sally's story, and that of her mother's friend, little Sr. Jeanne, that takes center stage in this beautiful little novel, a tale of the paradoxes and sacrifices that love of God and of other frail human beings entail.
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Details
- Bookseller
- MICHELLE YARNELL (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- The Ninth Hour
- Title
- The Ninth Hour
- Author
- Alice McDermott
- Book Condition
- New
- Jacket Condition
- Fine
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 1250192749
- ISBN 13
- 9781250192745
- Publisher
- Picador
- Date Published
- 2018
- Pages
- 256
Terms of Sale
MICHELLE YARNELL
About the Seller
MICHELLE YARNELL
About MICHELLE YARNELL
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Poor
- A book with significant wear and faults. A poor condition book is still a reading copy with the full text still readable. Any...