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    A Study Guide for Alice McDermott's "Charming Billy"
    A Study Guide for Alice McDermott's "Charming Billy"
    A Study Guide for Alice McDermott's "Charming Billy"
    Ebook30 pages24 minutes

    A Study Guide for Alice McDermott's "Charming Billy"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Alice McDermott's "Charming Billy," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 14, 2016
    ISBN9781535820660
    A Study Guide for Alice McDermott's "Charming Billy"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Alice McDermott's "Charming Billy" - Gale

      1

      Charming Billy

      Alice McDermott

      1998

      Introduction

      Charming Billy (1998), Alice McDermott's most celebrated novel, focuses on the tragic life of Billy Lynch, an Irish American who comes of age in New York City during the later part of the twentieth century. It opens at his funeral where several of his friends and relatives gather to recall Billy's life within his tight-knit Irish Catholic, Queens community. As they come to offer support to his longsuffering widow Maeve, they celebrate his poetic, gentle soul and mourn his descent into the alcoholism that eventually killed him.

      As McDermott weaves together the sometimes contradictory stories from those who have come to remember Billy, she presents a heartbreaking portrait of unrequited love and a masterful depiction of an Irish community that revels in its traditions and remains loyal to its members. In her chronicle of Billy's attempts to realize his dreams and the tragic result of his failures, she creates a poignant tale of love and loss and the tension between romantic illusions and reality.

      Author Biography

      Alice McDermott was born on June 27, 1953 to Mildred Lynch McDermott and William J. McDermott, who, like Billy in Charming Billy, worked for Con Edison. Alice was raised in a middle-class Irish Catholic family in the suburbs of Long Island, New York. She attended elementary school at St. Boniface in Elmont, Long Island, and high school at Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead, both typical Irish Catholic schools run by the church. Though she never knew her grandparents since both of her parents had been orphaned, her family became a part of the Irish Catholic community in suburban Long Island. Many of her novels reflect her upbringing there during

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