Alice McDermott's Child of My Heart

Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Alice McDermott is a writer akin to Stewart O'Nan and Anita Brookner, whose work is quiet and slow. McDermott won the National Book Award for Charming Billy and Child of My Heart is worthy of such recognition as well.

The narrator, a beautiful girl whose parents have moved to the Hamptons and encouraged her to care for the children of and to do pet sitting for rich and powerful summer visitors, hope that she will make a "good" marriage, something not quite as peculiar in the early 1960s as it seems today. She invites her favorite cousin, Daisy, the child of her heart, to stay with her for the summer.

Slowly, as the two girls walk the dogs and pet the cats and care for the child of summer people from the city the precarious state of Daisy's health, the wandering eye of an old and famous painter, and the dysfunctional family living next door come together to create a stunning denouement.

2012 No 9