A peculiar beautifully written book, her writing to me is reminstant of [a:Markus Zusak|11466|Markus Zusak|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1537240528p2/11466.jpg]. It was interesting to learn about the nursing nuns as it was something completely new to me especially in the setting of NYC. The city doesn't play a huge role in the book which is actually nice since so many books turn the city into a character itself which it doesn't need to be. Weird but good is the best way to describe it. ( )

Set in Brooklyn in the early 20th century, a young man commits suicide (not a spoiler – it is in the book’s description and first paragraphs), leaving his wife and unborn child without means. A nun happens to arrive on the scene, and helps the woman, providing her a job in the convent. When the child, called Sally, is born, she is raised with assistance from the sisters. The storyline follows several of the sisters, as they help the poor, sick, and elderly. The storyline also follows Sally’s struggles to decide whether or not to join the convent. Sally tries to help her mother, making a drastic decision that will change many lives. There are a few chapters that contain descendants of the main characters, providing a glimpse of what is to come. This is a quiet and sad story about life, morality, mortality, and the impact of decisions. It is not flashy or for anyone looking for action. It portrays the domino effect of an individual’s decisions that ripple down through the generations. I particularly enjoyed the writing style. I had never read anything by Alice McDermott before and look forward to reading more of her back catalogue. ( )

From the book's description: In prose of startling radiance and precision, Alice McDermott tells a story that is at once wholly individual and universal in its understanding of the human condition.

I listened to this through the night so missed big patches of it, however when I was listening I was rewarded by the superlative writing and the narrator's (Ash Rizi) complementary voice.

I hope to return to this one day and listen to it properly. Though maybe not, as it is stuck in that awful period of Catholicism in Ireland in the 1950s.

It's a relatively short book at 6+ hours. ( )

I learned three things about Alice McDermott after reading this novel of hers. First, she has a very low opinion of women. Second, she has a seething hatred for all things Catholic. And, third, she belongs to that growing population of writers who firmly (albeit inaccurately) believe that the baser their language and the more offensive their content, the wittier and more sophisticated their books sound.

The Ninth Hour truly does represent a rampage of tastelessness and vulgarity that the discerning reader will find unbearable.

Do we really need graphic descriptions of a one-legged amputee’s menstrual blood and armpit hair? Of course not, but that is the kind of unnecessarily crass and bawdy content that gets dished out in spades throughout the narrative of this book. McDermott has a prurient fixation on bodily functions that would keep a psychoanalyst busy for decades.

Based on the synopsis on the back cover of this book, one would expect to read a heartfelt tale examining how one person’s suicide creates a ripple effect throughout his community and across the generations, but that is not what the reader gets. The Ninth Hour is actually a pretentious, meandering look at an early 20th century Brooklyn neighborhood told through a cacophony of voices from a confusing jumble of unidentified narrators.

Sally, her mother, and a group of nuns are the principle characters in this disorganized mess of a novel. All of the characters—major & minor—are two-dimensional and superficial; and not one of them is in the least bit appealing or even remotely sympathetic.

Sally is a vapid mimic who has no personality or thought processes of her own.

Sally’s mother is a stereotypical cardboard cutout of the dreary widow who works hard to raise her daughter while indulging in a lascivious fling with the grotesque & unhappily married neighborhood milkman.

All of the nuns are described in various ways as physically repugnant, self-absorbed, pugnacious, wretched, and contemptuous of the Church they serve.

And, for some odd reason, the author weaves a thinly veiled undertone of rampant nymphomania throughout the entire convoluted plotline.

The only point this incredibly pointless novel manages to convey is the clear message that pretty girls have no business entering the religious life, and only ugly, unwanted women should be in convents—hardly an inspirational or life-affirming sentiment.

With all of the hateful and vacuous characters surrounding him, the only real question left for the reader to answer is why Sally’s father didn’t kill himself sooner. ( )

Alice McDermott has created a particularly rich, nuanced world with this one. From the various Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor whose inner lives she vividly evokes, to the slightly mysterious, only vaguely described narrators who look back on most of the events of the story via stories they were told themselves, to the many other major and minor players in this drama, McDermott captures something essential and telling with each one. The Ninth Hour is not a light read by any stretch, but it's a very good one. Sister Jeanne just about broke my heart.

Good interview here: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/alice-mcdermott/ ( )