num_pages: 224
description: Twice a week, Lucy Dailey leaves suburbia with her three children in tow, returning to the Brooklyn home where she grew up, and where her stepmother and unmarried sisters still live. Aunt Veronica, with her wounded face and dreams of beauty, drowns her sorrows in drink. Aunt Agnes, an acerbic student of elegance, sips only from the finest crystal as she sees Aunt May, the ex-nun, blossom with a late and unexpected love. And all the while, the children watch, absorbing the legacy of their haunted family. At once a moving evocation of life's inexplicable calamities and a magical celebration of childhood and familial love, AT WEDDINGS AND WAKES is the story of three generations of an Irish-American family through the eyes of its youngest members. With eloquence and grace, master storyteller Alice McDermott transforms everyday experience into the heroic and universal.
language: English
title: At Weddings and Wakes
titlecomplete: At Weddings and Wakes
genres: Ireland, Irish Literature, Adult Fiction, Novels, Historical Fiction, Literature, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Fiction, Womens
ratings_count: 1663
places: Brooklyn, New York City, New York
awards: awardedAt: 725875200000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Fiction
publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC