She does not like to write linear narratives, she says. What we have to say about what happens is more important than what actually happens. Charming Billy, scheduled to come out in paperback in January, recounts a tale of a man who has just died. Family is central to McDermott's work. I want to reconstruct the inner life.
Family is the first source of that.
McDermott grew up in suburban Long Island in a Catholic family with Irish roots. I know their homes, what they eat, how they turn a phrase. Her work is not autobiographical. She crafts her stories in longhand and then reworks them at length on a computer. She writes on a legal pad with pen at any table in the house.