The Ninth Hour

Starred review from July 17, 2017
National Book Award winner McDermott (Someone) delivers an immense, brilliant novel about the limits of faith, the power of sacrifice, and the cost of forgiveness. Set in Brooklyn in the early 20th century, the story begins in tragedy as young and pregnant Annie, an Irish immigrant, returns home to her shabby tenement apartment to find her 32-year-old husband dead from intentional carbon monoxide poisoning. In order to make money, Annie takes a job doing laundry at the local convent. In turn, the nuns of the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor help Annie raise her daughter, Sally, after she is born. As Sally pushes through adolescence, the influence of the strict yet benevolent sisters and the church’s teachings takes hold. At 18, Sally embarks on her own novitiate journey, accompanying Sister Lucy and bubbly Sister Jeanne to the cluttered homes and sickbeds of New York’s most poor and wretched. The novel jumps around in time and spans three generations, exploring the paths of Annie, Sally, and Sally’s children. But 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, especially her stint taking care of cantankerous and one-legged Mrs. Costello, are paradoxically grotesque and irresistible. As in her other novels, McDermott exhibits a keen eye for character, especially regarding the nuns (Sister Lucy, who “lived with a small, tight knot of fury at the center of her chest,” is most memorable).

Starred review from June 15, 2017
In Brooklyn in the early 20th century, The Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor are intimately involved in the lives of their community.When a depressed young man with a pregnant wife turns on the gas in his apartment and takes his own life, among the first to arrive on the scene is an elderly nun. "It was Sister St. Savior's vocation to enter the homes of strangers, mostly the sick and the elderly, to breeze into their apartments and to sail comfortably through their rooms, to open their linen closets or china cabinets or bureau drawers--to peer into their toilets or the soiled handkerchiefs clutched in their hands." By the time the fatherless baby is born, St. Savior will have been so instrumental in the fate of the young widow that the baby will be her namesake, called Sally for short. Sally will be largely raised in the convent, where her mother has been given a job helping out with laundry. The nuns also find a friend for the new mother--a neighbor with a houseful of babies--then they finagle a baby carriage, and "the two young mothers negotiated the crowded streets like impatient empresses." This desperately needed and highly successful friendship is just the beginning of the benign interference of the Sisters in the private lives and fates of their civilian neighbors. Partly told by a voice from the future who drops tantalizing hints about what's to come--for example, a marriage between the occupants of the baby carriages--this novel reveals its ideas about love and morality through the history of three generations, finding them in their kitchens, sickbeds, train compartments, love nests, and basement laundry rooms. Everything that her readers, the National Book Award committee, and the Pulitzer Prize judges love about McDermott's (Someone, 2013, etc.) stories of Irish-Catholic American life is back in her eighth novel.

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Starred review from July 1, 2017
In this enveloping, emotionally intricate, suspenseful drama, McDermott lures readers into her latest meticulously rendered Irish American enclave, returning to early twentieth-century Brooklyn, the setting for Someone (2013). A man's suicide would have left his young, pregnant widow destitute but for the Little Sisters of the Sick Poor, who care for everyone in their parish with zestful efficiency. Annie is given a job in the convent laundry under the direction of the taciturn, secretly softhearted Sister Illuminata, while young, sweet, surprisingly worldly Sister Jeanne helps Annie care for her clever, funny daughter. Sally thrives in this immaculate basement sanctuary where stains and stinksevidence of toil, suffering, and sinare urgently eradicated with soap and prayers. While Annie, in spite of the convent's piety and orderliness, embraces the rampant messiness of life, even illicit love, Sally's calling to become a nun is cruelly tested on a hellish train journey into the dirty world. 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. As she considers the struggles of women, faith and inheritance, sacrifice and passion, she pays vivid tribute to the skilled and sustaining sisters, a fading social force. McDermott's extraordinary precision, compassion, and artistry are entrancing and sublime. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This is one of literary master McDermott's most exquisite works, and a national tour and concerted publicity campaign will generate avid requests.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

Starred review from August 1, 2017

This seamlessly written new work from National Book Award winner McDermott (Someone) asks how much we owe others, how much we owe ourselves, and, of course, given McDermott's consistent attention to the Catholic faith, how much we owe God. Not much on any account for Irish immigrant Jim, down on his luck through his own doing, who turned on the gas in his early 1900s Brooklyn tenement and killed himself while nearly incinerating the building. He left behind pregnant wife Annie, comforted by Sister St. Saviour of the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor, who boldly bargains with God in an effort to assure the victim a proper Catholic burial. Annie secures work at the convent, helping tough-but-tender Sister Illuminata in the laundry while befriending spitfire young Sister Jeanne and raising her daughter, Sally. In the end, both Sally and Jeanne make sacrifices of conscience to assure Annie's happiness. But as we see, Michael Tierney, head of a family to which both mother and daughter are close, refused to sacrifice himself to his father's wishes. VERDICT In lucid, flowing prose, McDermott weaves her characters' stories to powerful effect. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 3/8/17.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2017

This seamlessly written new work from National Book Award winner McDermott (Someone) asks how much we owe others, how much we owe ourselves, and, of course, given McDermott's consistent attention to the Catholic faith, how much we owe God. Not much on any account for Irish immigrant Jim, down on his luck through his own doing, who turned on the gas in his early 1900s Brooklyn tenement and killed himself while nearly incinerating the building. He left behind pregnant wife Annie, comforted by Sister St. Saviour of the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor, who boldly bargains with God in an effort to assure the victim a proper Catholic burial. Annie secures work at the convent, helping tough-but-tender Sister Illuminata in the laundry while befriending spitfire young Sister Jeanne and raising her daughter, Sally. In the end, both Sally and Jeanne make sacrifices of conscience to assure Annie's happiness. But as we see, Michael Tierney, head of a family to which both mother and daughter are close, refused to sacrifice himself to his father's wishes. VERDICT In lucid, flowing prose, McDermott weaves her characters' stories to powerful effect. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 3/8/17.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2017

One of the great writers of the Irish American experience, National Book Award winner McDermott offers the story of a young immigrant in early 1900s Brooklyn who has lost his job and is being hectored by his pregnant wife. So he asserts himself the only way he knows how: he turns on his tenement's gas taps. The suicide is never discussed, yet it has an enormous impact on the victim's family and friends for generations. BEA promotion.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.