The Ninth Hour, Alice McDermott
The Ninth Hour, Alice McDermott
17 Rating(s)
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

The Ninth Hour
A Novel

Author: Alice McDermott

Narrator: Euan Morton

Unabridged: 8 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/19/2017


Synopsis

"[Euan Morton's] steady, gentle delivery allows McDermott's elegant prose to shine. It's a quiet story about love and sacrifice that manages to be extremely moving without becoming sentimental or maudlin. Morton's performance similarly brims with emotion but never overflows." — AudioFile magazine

A magnificent new audiobook from one of America’s finest writers—a powerfully affecting story spanning the twentieth century of a widow and her daughter and the nuns who serve their Irish-American community in Brooklyn.

On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove—to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his pregnant wife—“that the hours of his life belong to himself alone.” In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Savior, an aging nun appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child.

We begin deep inside Catholic Brooklyn, in the early part of the twentieth century. Decorum, superstition, and shame collude to erase the man’s brief existence. Yet his suicide, although never spoken of, reverberates through many lives and over the decades testing the limits and the demands of love and sacrifice, of forgiveness and forgetfulness, even through multiple generations.

The characters we meet — from Sally, the unborn baby at the beginning of the audiobook who becomes the center of the story, to the nuns whose personalities we come to know and love, to the neighborhood families with whose lives they are entwined — are all rendered with extraordinary sympathy and McDermott’s trademark lucidity and intelligence. Alice McDermott’s The Ninth Hour is a crowning achievement by one of the premiere writers at work in America today, and the audio edition is truly unforgettable.

About Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott is the author of nine novels, all published by FSG, including Charming Billy, winner of the National Book Award, and That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This, which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of the essay collection What About the Baby?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and other publications. She lives outside Washington, DC.

About Euan Morton

Euan Morton’s narration credits include Christopher Moore’s Fool and Sacre Bleu, Neil Gaiman’s Stories, Eoin Colfer’s Benny books, and Frank Herbert’s Dune and Chapterhouse Dune. Morton’s breakthrough role was appearing as Boy George in the musical Taboo, which earned him a Laurence Olivier Award nomination. He reprised the role on Broadway, earning Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Award nominations, as well as the Theatre World Award (for Outstanding Broadway Debut). Morton's other stage performances include Leaves of Glass, Sondheim on Sondheim, and Cyrano De Bergerac. He lives in New York City and Arlington, Virginia.


Reviews

Alice McDermott is one of my very favorite writers. I found in her new novel the same subtle, quiet storytelling with simple prose, descriptions that defy you to stay in your present place and send you to this place, this Catholic, Irish-American Brooklyn in the early twentieth century. She invites......more

I went into this blind - having only skimmed over some reviews but trusting my GR friend's high ratings. So, little did I know that as dark as this starts off and moments during, McDermott's prose rubs off like a balm for both the spirit and the soul. It starts with a suicide in the early 20th century......more


Awards

  • NPR Best Book of the Year
  • Hudson Booksellers Best of the Year
  • National Book Critics Circle Award - Nominee
  • Kirkus Prize Finalists
  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year
  • Library Journal Best Books of the Year
  • Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year
  • International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award - Nominee
  • Time Magazine Best Books of the Year
  • New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year
  • Wall Street Journal Best Books of the Year