The Ninth Hour: A Novel by Alice McDermott (Epub)

Description

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.

User’s Reviews

Review New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2017The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Fiction 2017The Wall Street Journal’s Top 10 Novels of 2017Time Magazine’s Top 10 Novels of 2017NPR’s Best Books of 2017Kirkus Reviews’ Best Fiction & Best Historical Fiction of 2017Library Journal’s Top 10 Novels of 2017“McDermott has extended her range and deepened it, allowing for more darkness, more generous lashings of the spiritual . . . Vivid and arresting . . . Marvelously evocative.” ―Mary Gordon, The New York Times Book Review“Beautifully observed, quietly absorbing . . . This enveloping novel, too, is a tonic, if not a cure.” ―Heller McAlpin, NPR“[T]he precision of a master . . . [A] great novel.” ―The Wall Street Journal“Stunning… McDermott has created a haunting and vivid portrait of an Irish Catholic clan in early 20th century America.” ―The Associated Press“Brilliant… perhaps her finest work to date.” ―Michael Magras, The Houston Chronicle“A remarkable snapshot of early 20th-century Irish-Catholic Brooklyn.” ―Entertainment Weekly“[B]eautifully crafted . . . McDermott illuminates every­day scenes with such precise, unadorned descriptions that the reader feels he or she is there, hidden in the background . . . [Everything] is treated with McDermott’s exquisite language, tinged with her signature wit…. [A] novel to savor and to share.” ―Bookpage“McDermott is a poet of corporeal description . . . it’s the way she marries the spirit to the physical world that makes her work transcendent . . . The Ninth Hour is a story with the simple grace of a votive candle in a dark church.” ―Sarah Begley, Time”In this enveloping, emotionally intricate, suspenseful drama, McDermott lures readers into her latest meticulously rendered Irish American enclave. . . Like Alice Munro, McDermott is profoundly observant and mischievously witty, a sensitive and consummate illuminator of the realization of the self, the ravages of illness and loss, and the radiance of generosity. . . McDermott’s extraordinary precision, compassion, and artistry are entrancing and sublime. . . This is one of literary master McDermott’s most exquisite works.” ―Donna Seaman, Booklist, starred review“This seamlessly written new work from National Book Award winner McDermott asks how much we owe others, how much we owe ourselves, and, of course, McDermott’s consistent attention to the Catholic faith, how much we owe God . . . In lucid, flowing prose, McDermott weaves her character’ stories to powerful effect. Highly recommended.” ―Library Journal, starred review“McDermott delivers an immense, brilliant novel about the limits of faith, the power of sacrifice, and the cost of forgiveness . . . It’s the thread that follows Sally’s coming of age and eventual lapse of faith that is the most absorbing. Scenes detailing her benevolent encounters . . . are paradoxically grotesque and irresistible . . . McDermott exhibits a keen eye for character.” ―Publishers Weekly, starred review“Everything that her readers, the National Book Award committee, and the Pulitzer Prize judges love about McDermott’s stories of Irish-Catholic American life is back.” ―Kirkus Reviews, starred review“The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott: National Book Award winner McDermott is simply one of the finest living Catholic writers, and her new novel looks to capture the spirit of her previous work: families and cultures strained by the optimism of faith tempered by the suffering of reality. … A generational novel sure to appeal to longtime McDermott fans, and to bring-in new readers as well.” ―The Millions“Extraordinary . . . Astonishing . . . Compelling . . . Surely there has never been as strong and clear-eyed a novel about kindness as Alice McDermott’s The Ninth Hour . . . McDermott is yet again at the height of her formidable powers. This work of art comes to us at a time when, as much as ever, we need a call to compassion.” ―East Hampton Star“Any good and proper Most-Anticipated-Fiction list of mine will always start with Alice McDermott.” ―The Quivering Pen“McDermott [is] the master of understated storytelling.” ―Washington Independent Review of BooksPublishers Weekly Top 10 Literary Fiction Picks for Fall 2017Excerpted in The New YorkerPRAISE FOR ALICE MCDERMOTT “McDermott has the soul of an archaeologist―excavating shards of the daily routine, closely examining the cracks and crevices of the human heart.” ―O Magazine“Exquisite. . . deft. . . filled with so much universal experience, such haunting imagery, such urgent matters of life and death.” ―The New York Times“Packed with complexity and emotion” ―The Washington Post“Filled with subtle insights and abundant empathy and grace.” ―USA Today“Lyrical study of quotidian life. . . McDermott manages to write lyrically in plain language, she is able to find the drama in uninflected experience.” ―Los Angeles Times“With virtuosic concision, McDermott assembles this swirl of seemingly mundane anecdotes into a powerful examination of love, mortality, and ‘the way of all flesh.’” ―The New Yorker”The micropoetry elevates the book from a gently story to a multilayered Our Town-like tale.” ―People “Each slide, each scene, from the ostensibly inconsequential to the clearly momentous, is illuminated with equal care.” ―The New York Times Book Review“The landscape of memory is a chiaroscuro in motion.” ―Boston Globe“That’s the spectacular power of McDermott’s writing: Without ever putting on literary airs, she reveals to us what’s distinct about characters who don’t have the ego or eloquence to make a case for themselves as being anything special.” ―Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, NPR“Extraordinary art woven out of ordinary lives.” ―The Quivering Pen“Gripping and resonant. . . In her own way, she achieves as much as the dazzling, muscular ‘hysterical realists.’ For she manages to break all the basic rules of writing―only quietly.” ―NPR“Almost without exception, each moment . . . is so thoroughly mined so that every story, nearly every thought it seems, reveals the true complexity of our lives.” ―The Coffin Factory“[McDermott] is a sublime artist of the quotidian.” ―San Francisco Chronicle“In beautifully understated language and an unerringly nimble free-associative narrative, McDermott weaves such an intimate complex life study that we feel each . . . accumulating loss until they become staggering.” ―Elle

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ Here’s the gist of my review of “The Ninth Hour”, by Alice McDermott: I loved it and I didn’t want it to end. Keep reading and I’ll tell you why.Beginning with a suicide on a dismal winter’s day in Catholic/immigrant Brooklyn near the beginning of the 20th century, McDermott completely and vividly captures the time, place and denizens of this moment in the history of New York, the US, and of the Catholic Church.The novel is narrated by a collective “we”; the children and grandchildren of the main characters. This narrative choice was captivating and thoroughly realistic for me, as I am the great-grandchild of Irish Catholic immigrants whose stories and faith were handed down from generation to generation.McDermott centers the story around two families and the nuns belonging to the convent of the “Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor, Congregation of Mary Before the Cross”. I became particularly fond of the nun characters as McDermott fully renders each as individuals; sweet Sister Jeanne, stern Sister Lucy, pragmatic Sister Illuminata, and manipulative Sister Saint Savoir who starts the whole story rolling. So often modern literature depicts nuns in a negative light, it was refreshing to meet nun characters who were “real”: neither all good nor all bad, each with their own motivations and beliefs. Sister Jeanne especially focuses her faith on “fairness” and the belief that God will make everything balance in the end, even though in life we see so much unfairness: the good suffer, evil is rewarded. This is a running theme throughout the novel.McDermott’s neighborhood is filled with details that are but a memory today:- Milk Men- Nuns begging for alms and nursing the poor- Wakes- Statues covered in purple cloth during Lent- The certainty of Heaven and HellMidway through the novel there is a chapter that takes place on an overnight train ride between New York and Chicago that is both perfect and genius, and the reason why McDermott is an acclaimed author. Her writing puts the reader right on that train with the character Sally, who is going to Chicago with the intention of becoming a nun like the Little Sisters she grew up with (her mother worked in the convent laundry). I could almost hear, smell, taste, and feel, along with Sally on her transformative ride.

⭐ Read on one level, “The Ninth Hour” is the story of a young widow and her daughter who find work and emotional support at a local convent of nursing nuns in Brooklyn in the early 20th century. The story follows them from the suicide of the woman’s husband through the decades as narrated by her grandchildren.On another level, it’s a story about the sacred and the profane, sin and redemption, as reflected through the nuns’ actions over the years, from selfless devotion to murder. As they deal with the tragedies and harsh realities that surround those in their care, the sisters inhabit a world where they are both cloistered and street-savvy.The narration and sometimes elliptical explanations of the characters’ connections can be confusing, but McDermott weaves a thoughtful and thought-provoking book.

⭐ This is a remarkable book. I read it in one sitting because, quite simply, I could not put it down. I am a McDermott fan, but she has outdone herself with this story of sacrifice, and love, and redemption. You’ll not be disappointed.

⭐ I found this book a dismal disappointment. I expected so much more from Alice McDermott. The book was haphazard, the scenes redundant, and the character point-of-view flipped back and forth between so many characters I had no idea who the “main” character was. Even the plot twist/reveal at the end was weak and didn’t reward me for investing the time to read the whole novel. I was especially confounded by the repetitive phrasing and the same scenes and conversations being replayed multiple times through the book. Not artfully from different perspectives, just the same stuff rehashed.The first chapter had me engaged; we saw into the psyche of a man who decides to take his own life and leaves behind a young, pregnant wife. I’m hooked. I think I know where the story is going, but when I’ve read a quarter of the book, I’m unsure who the main character is. We see the young widow, Annie, float in and out of the scenes, but very rarely from her perspective. There are a string of Sisters marching through the story, but their involvement and point-of-views seem haphazard. Maybe the daughter, Sally, is the focus? But rather than watch Sally’s progression from an infant up through the years, she is shown in snippets at various, nonconsecutive ages, making it hard to get a feel for her character. Okay, I’ll be patient and keep reading.Sadly, by the half-way point, there is still no clear character development or plot. By three-quarters, I think I know the focus of the book and have finally discovered the main character (Eureka! I’ve got it!), but then that character dies off and disappears, almost without notice, like a whiff of smoke drifting out an open window. In comes new characters I care nothing about, and the book ends without an end.The descriptions within the scenes and the emotions shown by the characters were entertaining, realistic and interesting in themselves, but unfortunately did not work together well enough to build a sustainable plot.Even saying all this, I would read Alice McDermott’s next novel to give myself one more chance to fall back in love with her, sorely based on her past reputation.

⭐ I often wander out of my preferred genres in the hope that I will discover a new vein of literary gold. In this case I found a very competent read by a highly accomplished author, but not the excitement of discovery I had hoped for.The story unfolds in Brooklyn in the early 20th century, bouncing around, but in an organized way, between three generations of well-developed and interesting characters. At the center of it all are the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor who live in the gritty neighborhood and administer to its needs.The characters are skillfully filled out but a little packaged, much like the subjects of a Normal Rockwell painting, but with a lot more gravitas. A few are stereotypical but never clichéd. And the main characters ultimately prove to be multi-faceted and fairly complex, giving the story a mystery that is unexpected early on.It is a book of descriptive storytelling and the author creates scene after scene that instill a down to earth familiarity akin to that created by Jan Karon in the deservedly beloved Mitford series.The book is written from the feminine perspective but does not play gender favorites. There are many different takes on issues of morality, perhaps best summed up by the Sister Jeanne perspective: “Sister Jeanne believed that fairness demanded this chaos [the suffering that is life] be righted. Fairness demanded that grief should find succor, that wounds should heal, insult and confusion find recompense and certainty, that every living person God had made should not, willy-nilly, be forever unmade.” Life, in the end, is difficult, but ultimately reasoned.That perspective of morality does, however, lead to some actions and their aftermath, or lack thereof, that stretch the reader’s ability to suspend disbelief. Or at least mine. My own life hasn’t been harder, but it has been messier.There is also a strong theme of love and, as in the case of morality, it takes many shapes and forms. All, however, are candidly honest and not romanticized into fantasy. Solid, down to earth, and the kinds of love every reader can relate to.The story starts very slowly and takes some time to build up steam. To some extent, however, I think that is common to the brand of descriptive narrative employed. By the finish you’re reading along at a brisk trot.In the end I gave the book a four not because I enjoyed it that much but because fans of this author surely will. The writing is very strong. It didn’t tickle my own literary fancy but that’s okay. It was a good read nonetheless.

⭐ Stunning and beautifully written, this is a book about our connection to each other. Nothing in life is random. Each step, each action links people to other people and consequences reverberate to shape lives.Annie’s husband carefully and methodically kills himself, leaving her a widow. He doesn’t care she will be an outcast in the community and he will be buried in unconsecrated ground. Annie is late in her pregnancy and will soon be left penniless. St. Savior, a local nun, ably takes control of the situation propelling both Annie as well as her unborn daughter to their new future. She provides a job that will secure Annie and help raise her child with the devoted sisters of the convent.The sisters are the threads that hold the Brooklyn community together. They selflessly and tirelessly protect and take care of the poor and neglected parishioners. Each person in the storyline is connected by a delicate strand, the cause, and effect of their actions spilling over to affect other people in their orbit, putting them on a collision course with fate.The novel is filled with terrific snippets of life in the convent. McDermott gives each one of the selfless nuns, as well as a host of others characters, weird and fascinating personalities. They come alive jumping off the pages with an unexpected and bizarre twist at the end.Just as it is said Jesus died in the Ninth hour, changing the world as He knew it, so does the ninth hour keep occurring, shifting lives and affecting the destinies of the people in the book.

⭐ McDermott’s writing is superb! She creates word pictures be they of place, “At six, the street lamps against the wet dark gave a polish to the air” or person where a corpse in a casket has “a look of a child when met with a spoon of castor oil.” This novel, set in Irish Brooklyn at the turn of the 20th century, begins with a death, actually a suicide. Some may believe it was the hand of God that steered Sister St. Saviour to the apartment of the pregnant widow. The Sister is the head of the local order of Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor. She is determined to bury the suicide in consecrated ground and take the widow and child under the care of the convent. Once more, in a parsimony of words, McDermott captures the Sister’s character when she mutters, “It would be a different Church if I were running it.” The reader grasps the character of the other sisters in the convent in similar terse, but descriptive passages and will come to either love or fear them. This is a book about faith and family, love and lust, and sin and redemption. Through both subtlety and strength, McDermott demonstrates again that she is a master at her craft.

⭐ I challenge any reader of Alice McDermott’s novel titled, The Ninth Hour, to finish it and not love the nuns. Through tightly written lyrical prose, McDermott takes us into the world of Catholic Brooklyn in the early to mid-twentieth century. Like McDermott, I was born into that culture in the middle of the twentieth century and there were nuns everywhere. Don’t expect to find the cheery singing nuns from the movies in McDermott’s world. These are hard-working, pragmatic women who are wise to the ways of the world and the Church, and live close to poor people and care for them with deep love and practical action. McDermott wastes no words in capturing setting and character. Here’s one of my favorite sentences from p.26: “All joy was thin ice to Sister Lucy.” So much explained and understood in just eight words. The rest of the words in this novel are just as perfect as these eight.Rating: Five-star (I love it)

⭐ This is beautiful writing that gives you a good sense of the characters and their relationships, the times in which they live, and the places where their dramas unfold. I could easily have given this book a 5-star rating based on that if it were not for the lack of plot, which results in a haphazard narrative, dubious character motivations, and a general failure to create an emotional response.

⭐ Alice McDermott might be my favorite living author, but sadly, this is not my favorite book. It is dark and narrow, as if she’s writing in a tone to mimic life in the basement laundry of an early-century Brooklyn convent, where much of this story takes place; either that, or this is a story about death and dying, which it might (also) be. While I appreciated the laser-sharp focus on the life of the “Little Sisters”, a life I had no idea about (how hard they worked, with fearlessness and compassion, though not always), the writing felt too constrained. It’s a hard story to enjoy, with so much gruesome dying, although no doubt McDermott wanted us to understand precisely what these women did in those days, the harsh duties and rituals they performed for the needy and poor. The reader also has to jump around in time with her; sometimes you don’t know where you are and she won’t tell you, you have to figure it out (a task I enjoy, generally, but even I had to flip around sometimes to understand who’s speaking and what’s what). The ending is peculiar. I can’t give this anything less than 4 stars because McDermott is such a favorite and such a master. But the subject was too tight, too cold. I just couldn’t get into it the way I always do with her beautiful, and usually much warmer, books.

Keywords

Free Download The Ninth Hour: A Novel in Epub format
The Ninth Hour: A Novel Epub Free Download
Download The Ninth Hour: A Novel 2018 Epub Free
The Ninth Hour: A Novel 2018 Epub Free Download
Download The Ninth Hour: A Novel Epub
Free Download Ebook The Ninth Hour: A Novel