Someone by Alice McDermott

How would you summarize any one life? A long narrative or glimpses of the best times, the worst times, the ordinary times - sometimes leaping across decades to make the connections?  McDermott has chosen the second alternative to share the life of plain but sturdy Marie Commeford.  Born in pre-Depression Brooklyn she begins her observations from the stoop of here largely immigrant neighborhood.  Her profoundly Irish Catholic family struggles no more or less than most.  The neighbors all share in the kind of tragedy that comes of poverty and disappointment as well as the comfort that comes with the sharing.  It is life daily lived but the language of the novel elevates the telling.  Each of us, it turns out, is someone.  We become someone from observations and life experiences we would often count as inconsequential.  Marie watches the boys playing stick ball in the street and never questions that Billy, blinded in WWI, is called upon to make the calls from his chair outside his door.  Years later it will figure into her understanding of both caring and grief.  So many little details, so often exactly the right word, so many moments of recognition - a very thoughtful read.