A graceful tale, an extended wake and reflection on the life of a man. Poignant, well-written characters, can't exactly say it was a pleasure to read but the author is very skilled in helping us see a man's life -- the joys, the despairs, the rejection.

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Good ol' Irish immigrant story set in NY. The story is beautiful and sad. Floats between the past and the present with each character.

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I actually thought this book dragged on waaay to much. About half-way through the book I realized that I didn't care about the characters.

I don't recommend this book.

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Book in excellent condition. This story will touch your heart. A secret between friends changes their lives forever. Billy's tragic sorrow juxtaposed against his ability to be generous and charming to everyone he meets makes him a true hero.

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I couldn't get into this book at all. I found it a little strange and boring. The characters were lame, the topic was weird, the setting was boring and the story didn't seem to grab me. I strated the book about 4 times and honestly couldn't finish the book.

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I was very disappointed in this book. I read it because it won a National Book Award, expecting something more. She explored the surrounding characters fairly thoroughly, but at the end of the book I was left wanting for any real understanding of the character of Billy. I also found the Irish cliches a bit overdone. It was a pretty depressing book with a rather fatalistic end, but I also found the writing style poor. She is the undisputed queen of run-on sentences and it makes the reading muddled in many places. In the latter half of the book I actually laughed out loud because she had an entire paragraph spanning two pages that was literally one sentence. No kidding, a single sentence that was over 165 words long (Out of sheer incredulity I had to count) How that type of writing qualifies for winning an award is beyond me.

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Really enjoyed it-- I think the author is extremely gifted.

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I found this book to be extremely hard to follow. It jumps all over the place between different people and different time periods and honestly I did not finish it. I have a whole shelf of books to be read and I'd rather just move on to the next one than try to continue chugging through this when I'm getting nothing out of it. And I normally ALWAYS finish books.

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Beautiful even though it is a sad story of a man that has
passed. Friends and family have gathered to eulogize Billy.It is not maudlin but the tale of trading stories paying homage to the life of Billy. Many secrets come out and much sorrow has been in Billy's life. He was funny, a charmer, and a romantic. I liked this read. It was wonderfully written, and left me thinking about what my own friends and family will say when i am gone. Alice McDermott writes stories that leave you thinking and have depth.

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Alice McDermott can *write*! This story of two cousins from a large Irish-American family is lyrically told.

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While "Charming Billy" will make your heart ache, you will love the beautiful writing and the emotionally moving story about a New York Irish Catholic family. The novel reveals how good intentions can be as destructive as the truth they mean to hide. The author won the National Book Award for this work.

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A complex book that's beautifully written despite the subject matter - an Irish American family's struggles to love, support and come to terms with the relationships they have to each other, one of whom is an alcoholic. What I loved about this book in addition to Alice McDermott's brillian way of telling a story, was the fact that there were no villains. Things were not black or white and there wer no solutions - only very real problems and very real people who loved on another not necessarily as well as they should have, but as best they could.

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