"Ms. McDermott gives us an affecting meditation on the consolations and discontents of family life.... And her easy authority with this material, combined with her clear-eyed sympathy for her characters, results in a moving, old-fashioned story about longing and loss and sorrow."--The New York Times

"It is hard to know how to start piling on praise for this gripping, poignant book....Before we are aware of what McDermott has done, we are completely engaged....Like magic, we are drawn in."--Chicago Tribune

"A master at capturing Irish-Catholic American suburban life . . . [McDermott] flawlessly encapsulates an era in the private moments of one family's life."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Word by word, metaphor by metaphor, McDermott writes the most exquisitely perceptive and atmospheric fiction published today. Heir to Woolf and Nabokov, she nets the totality of human consciousness."--Booklist

"After five penetrating novels and a National Book Award, McDermott infuses the undulating plot with the knowledge that lives become most vivid in small moments of connection . . . Genuinely moving yet amorphous, like a remembered fragrance that you can't quite place."--Kirkus Reviews