The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott: A review

It begins with a suicide. Jim, a young Irish Catholic immigrant in Brooklyn, recently fired from his job as a subway motorman for being chronically late or absent, decides that he'll show his former bosses and his wife that he is the one who is in charge of his life.

The way he will show them is to end that life. And so he opens the gas taps in their apartment while his wife is out and he lies down to die. Yes, that'll show them!

His pregnant wife returns home to find a burned apartment - someone struck a match - and a dead husband. And now no means of support.

Enter the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor. The nuns provide medical care for the sick of the neighborhood who cannot afford doctors. They take charge of the widow and her unborn child. They find employment for her at their convent and they provide emotional and financial support for the family in the difficult months and years ahead.

The Ninth Hour is the story of that family and these nuns. The widow, Anne, gives birth to a daughter, Sally, who becomes a child of the convent. And the story is narrated by Sally's children, so we get, essentially, the perspective of three generations of the family, as well as following the nuns on their rounds in the community.

Sally, as a child, greatly admires the nuns and she wants to be like them. When she is old enough, she decides that she has a vocation to become a nursing nun. Her mother and the nuns put her on a train to Chicago where she is to receive her training.

But her interactions with her fellow passengers on the train are a rude awakening to what the world and its great unwashed humanity are really like. By the time she reaches Chicago she has "thought better of it" and she turns around and goes back to Brooklyn.

The time period of this story is never explicitly stated but seems to be in the first half of the twentieth century. It's at a time when milk is still delivered in a bottle by a milkman and that milkman plays a big part in this story.

McDermott tells her tale quietly, with great subtlety. These characters are ordinary people who live their lives imperfectly, with mistakes and wrong turns aplenty, but through it all they persevere, keep moving forward and trying to do their best for themselves and their families.

In the end, their ordinary lives show us something extraordinary about humanity. The Irish Catholic immigrant experience in early twentieth century Brooklyn becomes a lens through which we can see the best and worst of humanity and understand the commonality of what we all share.

Although the book's narrative dragged a bit for me at times, on the whole, I really enjoyed McDermott's style of writing. Simple and matter-of-fact, it seemed to fit the story she was telling. We were introduced to a lot of characters and never really got to know most of them well, except for Sally, but these are people who earned our empathy.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

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