'Someone' Quietly Mesmerizes With Intimate, Ordinary Story
Everyone, it seems, is damaged — but getting on, somehow.
The novel is a mosaic: All of these characters appear in shards of Marie's life spanning more than 60 years. Marie tells us of her first heartbreak. Her job at a funeral home. Her brother's nervous breakdown. All the filigree and small surprises of her life are interspersed with the gossip and whispered stories of her upbringing.
There's no real engine driving the novel's plot, however — only time. And Marie doesn't undergo any dramatic transformation — which is usually a prerequisite for the main character in any novel.
Yet snuggling into bed to read Someone at the end of each day, I found myself eager to pick up where I had left off. McDermott writes with spare poetry and deep compassion. Her prose is unhurried, sometimes elliptical — she trusts us to grasp the story as it unfolds. She mesmerizes with very little, taking readers in unexpected directions through familiar territory.
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