Alice McDermott (2002) Child of My Heart.

I bought this book for 10p about a year ago out of my library. Somehow knowing you have a book means that you read other books in front of it. I read this in two goes: one half the first day and, well I’ll let you work out the rest (but don’t tell me your answer, I hate fractions). It’s a simple story and it’s all there in the first line. ‘I had in my care that summer four dogs, three cats, the Moran kids, Daisy my eight-year-old cousin and Flora the toddler child of a local artist.’ It sounds like a young voice and it is. The first-person narrator is Theresa that is described by herself and others as young Elizabeth Taylor -she’s fifteen- and Eustacia Vye. I admit I had to look up the latter –it’s from Hardy’s The Return of the Native. In anybody’s language she is classically beautiful. Children are drawn to her, animals ignore their owners and flock to her and men begin to hit on her. She’s smart too, as well as reading Hardy she quotes chunks of Shakespeare. In one of these synchronistic episodes I’d just read this passage from Macbeth before she said it.
Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in the petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his our upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale,
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing
(5.5. 18-27)
I’m quoting it in full, because it’s simply so good. Theresa the babysitter, Theresa the dog walker, Theresa the children’s joy, wears her learning lightly. When her niece comes to stay it is obvious there is something of the Theresa in her too, but it may have only one summer to bloom and seek the light. The true beauty lies in the writing. I’m looking out for other books wrote by Alice McDermott. I can’t give her any greater compliment.

Comments

That Night is a smasher by McDermott. Adored Child of My Heart.

 

I'll need to read more of her work. I've got something like 'Chasing Billy' or something wrote down on one of those bits of paper you invairably lose.