Critic Reviews
Great
Based on 17 reviews on
From the National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Alice McDermott, The Ninth Hour is the critically acclaimed "haunting and vivid portrait of an Irish Catholic clan in early twentieth century America" (The Associated Press).
One of Time Magazine's Top Ten Novels of the Year
A 2017 Kirkus Prize Finalist
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book
On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens a gas tap in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove--to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his pregnant wife--that "the hours of his life . . . belonged to himself alone." In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Saviour, an aging nun, a Little Nursing Sister of the Sick Poor, appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child.
New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books of 2017
The Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Fiction 2017
The Wall Street Journal's Top 10 Novels of 2017
Time Magazine's Top 10 Novels of 2017
NPR's Best Books of 2017
Kirkus Reviews' Best Fiction & Best Historical Fiction of 2017
Library Journal's Top 10 Novels of 2017
"McDermott has extended her range and deepened it, allowing for more darkness, more generous lashings of the spiritual . . . Vivid and arresting . . . Marvelously evocative." --Mary Gordon, The New York Times Book Review