Three grown children--two sisters and a brother--in an Irish-American family witness the cycles of dissatisfaction, bitterness, and affection that make up the lives of their extended family YA-- Complex family relationships are explored from the viewpoint of three children whose mother takes them on a weekly trip to her childhood home in Brooklyn to visit Momma, their martyred grandmother, and three aunts: Veronica, an overprotected recluse; Agnes, a sophisticated career woman; and May, a sweet former nun whose marriage and death are foretold in the title. The visits are rituals during which the youngsters, obviously adored by the women, are nonetheless absent-mindedly ignored by all except May. Over the predictable meal, the adults indulge in lamentations and vague complaints related to Momma's tragic past and the unsatisfactory marriage of the children's parents. In spare poetic prose, McDermott deftly weaves past and present as seen through the fresh, uncritical eyes of the children. The setting is sensually described in contrasts: the majesty of the Church, the drabness of the Brooklyn apartment, the sterility of suburbia, and the freedom of the family's ocean vacations. English teachers may wish to cite this work as an example of fine contemporary writing in which the author's use of language in describing the minutiae of everyday life creates a vidid sense of place. - Jackie Gropman, Richard Byrd Library, Fairfax, VA Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. Set in the Sixties, McDermott's third novel (following A Bigamist's Daughter , LJ 2/15/82, and That Night , LJ 3/15/87) tells the story of an extended Irish-American family observed primarily through the eyes of the children, a son and two daughters. Time circles backwards and forwards around a variety of family rituals: holiday meals, vacations at the shore, the wedding of a favorite aunt. The poignant middle-aged romance that develops between the aunt, a former nun, and her suitor, a shy mailman, exacerbates already pronounced family tensions. As they listen to oft-repeated stories about poverty, disease, and early deaths, the children are solemn witnesses to the Irish immigrant experience in America. By turns wry and sad, this is McDermott's finest novel to date. Highly recommended. - Barbara Love, St. Lawrence Coll., Kingston, Ontario Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. Following the author's splendid That Night (1987), this remarkable novel--about the temper and times of an Irish-American family in 1950's Long Island and Brooklyn--firmly establishes McDermott as a writer of major talent. Like Anglo-Irish novelist William Trevor, McDermott plots the touching dignity of ordinary lives pursued on the crest of inevitable sadness. Outside the wedding hall awaits the summons to the wake. Three school-age Dailey children--earnestly watching, like young animals training for survival in the snug safety of adult regimens--dutifully follow their mother Lucy on the summer treks from Long Island to Brooklyn--from the bus stop where Lucy is aware of her ``stunned hopelessness'' to the exciting trip through the subway cars and Lucy's leap, with the children, across the ``loud and dark and precarious distance'' of the coupled cars, toward home and her native Brooklyn. In the apartment (dark with boredom, tears, and doughty courage) are the aunts, Lucy's sisters: one defeated, one defiantly managing, and then May, simply loving. And there's also ``Momma,'' who emigrated from an Irish farm of mud and dirt, tended a dying sister and her four girls, married her sister's husband, and bore her own son, who now pays a (sober) ceremonial visit to his mother once a year at Christmas. Momma's anger has taken on fate. There are endless afternoons--the heavy meal, the cocktail hour, the quarrel time, weeping, and closed doors. But the ``merry fog'' of Christmas transforms the apartment, families, and life. For the Daileys there are the shore vacations for two weeks each year, when there is no past, with its ghosts and old hurts, but only a tender present. Then there's the wonderful day when May, the middle-aged ex-nun, is married--days before the fateful tap at the door of the seaside cottage. In translucent prose with rich recognitions, a fine novel of vigorous wisdom and heartbreaking humanity. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.