A determined alcoholic since he was told his Irish fiancee had died, he has lived a life of longing and selfabuse even as he's been married to the most understanding woman in the world. But he also saw, in his own . . . Lives are fundamentally changed as a result. And Dennis' daughter, the unobtrusive narrator, uses the secret to link one character portrait after another. McDermott's novel, which spins casually between past and present, is a family tree whose branches are so gnarled that one sometimes longs for a diagram.
Confusion is a minor distraction, however, in such a delicately assembled and wistful scrapbook.
Take a seat at this funeral, and you may hear your own relatives telling their stories of love and loss. Reviews will appear on The Denver Post Online.