are as fierce, funny, complicated and brave as any women in our fictional universe today.' he nuns of the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor. ' he story is exhilarating, largely because of McDermott's lyrical language and unforgettable characters. McDermott's language is, as always, precise and lyrical.' Its satisfactions lie not so much in its story as in its language, which is glorious.” But “The Ninth Hour” is also a love story, told at a languid, desultory pace and fulfilled most satisfyingly at the end.' There are so many ways to read this beautiful novel: as a Greek tragedy with its narrative chorus and the sins of the fathers as a Faulknerian tale out to prove once more that the “past is not even past” as a gothic tale wrestling with faith, punishment and redemption à la Flannery O’Connor or as an Irish novel in the tradition of Anne Enright and Colm Tóibín, whose sentences, like hers, burn on the page. Maureen Corrigan, The Wall Street Journal

With the precision of a master.McDermott lays bare the reasons why those 'small lives' matter.A great McDermott novel.' sees a world within those dusty parish halls, tenements, bars and funeral homes whose interest is inexhaustible. McDermott once again demonstrates her expansively attentive literary care and its quiet power.' reminds us of the pleasures of literary fiction and its power to illuminate lives and worlds.McDermott is a virtuoso of language and image, allusion and reflection, reference and symbol. not a cure.' This enveloping novel, too, is a tonic, if not a cure.' And more: The Ninth Hour is also about love, both forbidden and sanctioned, albeit with the caveat that 'Love's a tonic. But McDermott also addresses big, universal questions - about what constitutes a good life, and about how to live with the knowledge of 'that stillness, that inconsequence, that feral smell of death.' Her novel encompasses base hungers, sin, guilt, reparations, secrets, and depression - so little understood at the time. ' The Ninth Hour, like Colm Toíbín's Brooklyn, evokes a narrowly confined, simpler, largely bygone world. The Ninth Hour is a story with the simple grace of a votive candle in a dark church.' Mary Gordon, The New York Times Book Review

“McDermott has extended her range and deepened it, allowing for more darkness, more generous lashings of the spiritual. 2017 National book critics circle finalist for fiction

The ninth books