**Winner of the National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller,
Charming Billy is "Alice McDermott's masterpiece" (NPR).
**
In a small bar somewhere in the Bronx, a funeral party has gathered to
honor Billy Lynch. Through the night, his friends and family will weave
together the tale of a husband, lover, dreamer, and storyteller, but
also that of a hopeless drunk whose immense charm was but a veil over a
lifetime of secrets and all-consuming sorrow. As they comfort his widow,
the gentle Maeve, they remember as well his first love, Eva, who died of
pneumonia, and whose ghost haunted his marriage and drove him to the
bottle. Who is truly responsible for Billy's life and death, and what
does it mean to mythologize a friend's suffering?
Beautifully written and teeming with fine portraits of Irish-American
life in New York, Charming Billy is Alice McDermott's masterful and
beloved novel about how a community can pin its dreams to one man, and
how good intentions can be as destructive as the truth they were meant
to hide.