Charming Billy
By: Alice McDermott
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This sad story is about the love tragedy of Billy. He ends his life to drinking and after the funeral everyone reminisces about the good and bad times that everyone shared with him. The story is set at the funeral in Queens, New York. His cousin Dennis said he was “a sweet romantic that should have been preserved.” After World War II both Dennis and Billy spent a week on a beach outside of Long Island. That is where Billy met Eva. Soon after the week they were engaged. Since she was Irish, she was supposed to go back to her hometown. Billy worked two jobs to try to get enough money to bring Eva and her family back to the U.S. Even though he sent much money, Eva never returned to the U.S. She was said to have died of pneumonia. Dennis received word from her that she was married to someone else in County Wicklow in Ireland. Dennis hid this secret from Billy for thirty years. Since Eva never returned, Billy became an obsessive alcoholic. I pity Billy for all the pain that he must have felt to be such an alcoholic to end his life with a drink. I also pity him for what disappointment that Billy had when he found out that Eva was not returning. I believe that Billy started drinking because he was so depressed and believed that no one loved him. Charming Billy was a National Book Award winner. The Philadelphia Inquirer said, "It is an astoundingly beautiful novel about the persistence of love and perseverance of grief." Elle and The New York Times also say, "There is no one like Alice McDermott and she writes a luminous and affecting novel." I believe that this was a well-written book and that Alice McDermott put herself in the place of her characters and really brought them to life.
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More Information about Alcoholism
Lycos
Health by WebMD - A good definition of alcoholism
NIAAA
-The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism