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Also by Alice McDermott:

Absolution, November 2023
Hardcover / e-Book
The Ninth Hour, August 2023
Trade Paperback / e-Book
Someone, July 2023
Trade Paperback / e-Book
Child of My Heart, June 2023
Trade Paperback / e-Book
At Weddings and Wakes, May 2023
Trade Paperback
Someone, September 2013
Hardcover / e-Book
After This, October 2007
Paperback (reprint)
After This, September 2006
Hardcover
Child of My Heart, May 2004
Trade Size (reprint)
Charming Billy, January 1999
Paperback
That Night, January 1999
Paperback
A Bigamist's Daughter, January 1999
Paperback
At Weddings and Wakes, January 1998
Paperback

SOMEONE
By: Alice McDermott

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
September 2013
On Sale: September 10, 2013
240 pages
ISBN: 0374281092
EAN: 9780374281090
Kindle: B00CQYBA84
Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List

Other Editions
Trade Paperback (July 2023)

Fiction

A fully realized portrait of one woman’s life in all its complexity, by the National Book Award–winning author

An ordinary life—its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion—lived by an ordinary woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott’s extraordinary return, seven years after the publication of After This. Scattered recollections—of childhood, adolescence, motherhood, old age—come together in this transformative narrative, stitched into a vibrant whole by McDermott’s deft, lyrical voice.

Our first glimpse of Marie is as a child: a girl in glasses waiting on a Brooklyn stoop for her beloved father to come home from work. A seemingly innocuous encounter with a young woman named Pegeen sets the bittersweet tone of this remarkable novel. Pegeen describes herself as an “amadan,” a fool; indeed, soon after her chat with Marie, Pegeen tumbles down her own basement stairs. The magic of McDermott’s novel lies in how it reveals us all as fools for this or that, in one way or another.

Marie’s first heartbreak and her eventual marriage; her brother’s brief stint as a Catholic priest, subsequent loss of faith, and eventual breakdown; the Second World War; her parents’ deaths; the births and lives of Marie’s children; the changing world of her Irish-American enclave in Brooklyn—McDermott sketches all of it with sympathy and insight. This is a novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived; a crowning achievement by one of the finest American writers at work today.

Media Buzz

Diane Rehm Show - NPR - August 27, 2014
On Point - March 17, 2014
Studio 360 - October 26, 2013
CBS This Morning - October 9, 2013
All Things Considered - September 13, 2013
Fresh Air - NPR - September 4, 2013