What do You think about 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
