Each month during the summer, Newsday selected a book and hosted a live online chat with its author a few weeks later. Selections included: "Someone," by Long Island native Alice McDermott, "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves," by Karen Joy Fowler, and "Beautiful Ruins," by Jess Walter.

Entertainment

Books

Newsday Book Club

The Newsday Book Club met online Aug. 25 to discuss its third pick, “Beautiful Ruins” (Harper Perennial), with author Jess Walter. Walter offered us some insights about his novel, which was a national bestseller and a Newsday Best Book of 2012. Here are 10 things we learned: 
1. While writing the novel, he experienced the different story lines much the way the reader does. "For me, the curiosity about Dee and Pasquale drove the suspense ...During the writing, I would get so caught up in each [narrative] side-trip, and all I could hope was that the writer had the same experience — wait, what is this story, then — ooh, this one is interesting, too.” 
2. Of all the characters in the novel, he relates most to Pasquale Tursi. “Like most readers that I’ve heard from, the character I thought about the most, spent the most time with and probably empathized with most, was Pasquale Tursi. I put my joy and wistfulness over spending my life in my hometown into his character, and it was like I watched him grow into the sort of selfless person I wish I could be.” 
3. He loves postwar Italian cinema. “I love film from that era, especially Italian cinema. Fellini is wonderful. I was especially inspired by ‘Nights of Cabiria.’” 
4. Writing the character of Richard Burton, based on the real-life actor, wasn’t easy. “He had such an artist’s heart, and reading his diaries, you see this was a man who dreamed of being a writer. I wanted, not only to get the drinking, womanizing side of him down (and oh boy, was he that) but also the person seeking something profound in life.” 
5. After “Beautiful Ruins” was published, he heard from an ex-girlfriend of Richard Burton’s. “[She] was the girlfriend he took to Italy when he started ‘Cleopatra’ (and who was, like Dee, embroiled in the Liz Taylor scandal.) She said while the story wasn’t hers, ‘it felt exactly like that.’ That made me feel good.” 
6. He didn’t start the novel intending to make a point about women in Hollywood. “I never begin a novel looking to make a case, or highlight some injustice. Almost all of my impulses are narrative, but ... the book certainly became about the way Dee was seen as disposable by this big, multibillion dollar industry.” 
7. He has spent most of his life in his hometown of Spokane, Washington. “Pasquale’s sense of being ‘stuck’ somewhere provincial was something I was dealing with when I started the novel. By the time I ended it, I realized 1) it’s a gift to be from someplace, and 2) Spokane might be the most underrated city in America.” 
8. He worked on a screenplay for the film adaptation of “Beautiful Ruins.” “I helped write the script with the director, Todd Field. I’m not sure when (or if) it will go into production. ... I’m not too worried about it. I could live with the book being the final word on this story.” 
9. He works on different writing projects simultaneously. “When I get stuck on one novel, I can switch over to another one. I’m working on a novel about the Wobbly movement of the early 1900s, and the labor violence in the Pacific Northwest. ... I’m also writing a contemporary story about class and love in which a baby-sitter falls for a boy she watches once. Hard to say which one — if either — will reach the finish line first.” 
10. He’s a fan of the audiobook edition of “Beautiful Ruins.” “Usually, I’ve had trouble listening to the audio version, but from the first moment I heard Edoardo [Ballerini]’s voice, I thought — that’s it. His Italian pronunciation, and just his way of delivering narrative are amazing.”

Newsday Book Club chat with 'Beautiful Ruins' author Jess Walter: 10 things we learned

Book club: Author insight from Jess Walter

ruins walters - cropped

Author Jess Walter joined us Monday for the third installment of Newsday's monthly Book Club, to chat with readers about his novel “Beautiful Ruins” (Harper Perennial, $15.99), a Newsday Best Book of 2012. 
Moving from the Italian seacoast in 1962 to contemporary Hollywood, “Beautiful Ruins” follows the decades-long love between an Italian innkeeper and an American actress, with an ensemble cast of sweethearts and rogues and a cameo by Richard Burton. 
Readers can see what Walters had to say about his favorite characters in "Beautiful Ruins," the novel's possible film adaptation, his writing process and more by reading the chat below. 
To read an excerpt from "Beautiful Ruins," and read past Newsday Book Club chats, go to newsday.com/bookclub. (Mobile readers, tap the link above to view the conversation.)

Newsday Book Club: Chat with 'Beautiful Ruins' author Jess Walter

Book club chat: Jess Walter talks 'Beautiful Ruins'

The dying actress arrived in his village the only way one could come directly — in a boat that motored into the cove, lurched past the rock jetty, and bumped against the end of the pier. She wavered a moment in the boat’s stern, then extended a slender hand to grip the mahogany railing; with the other, she pressed a wide-brimmed hat against her head. All around her, shards of sunlight broke on the flickering waves. &nbsp; Twenty meters away, Pasquale Tursi watched the arrival of the woman as if in a dream. Or rather, he would think later, a dream’s opposite: a burst of clarity after a lifetime of sleep. Pasquale straightened and stopped what he was doing, what he was usually doing that spring, trying to construct a beach below his family’s empty pensione. Chest-deep in the cold Ligurian Sea, Pasquale was tossing rocks the size of cats in an attempt to fortify the breakwater, to keep the waves from hauling away his little mound of construction sand. Pasquale’s “beach” was only as wide as two fishing boats, and the ground beneath his dusting of sand was scalloped rock, but it was the closest thing to a flat piece of shoreline in the entire village: a rumor of a town that had ironically — or perhaps hopefully — been designated Porto despite the fact that the only boats to come in and out regularly belonged to the village’s handful of sardine and anchovy fishermen. The rest of the name, Vergogna, meant shame, and was a remnant from the founding of the village in the seventeenth century as a place for sailors and fishers to find women of ... a certain moral and commercial flexibility. &nbsp; On the day he first saw the lovely American, Pasquale was chest-deep in daydreams as well, imagining grubby little Porto Vergogna as an emergent resort town, and himself as a sophisticated businessman of the 1960s, a man of infinite possibility at the dawn of a glorious modernity. Everywhere he saw signs of il boom — the surge in wealth and literacy that was transforming Italy. Why not here? He’d recently come home from four years in bustling Florence, returning to the tiny backward village of his youth imagining that he brought vital news of the world out there — a glittering era of shiny macchine, of televisions and telephones, of double martinis and women in slender pants, of the kind of world that had seemed to exist before only in the cinema. &nbsp; Porto Vergogna was a tight cluster of a dozen old whitewashed houses, an abandoned chapel, and the town’s only commercial interest — the tiny hotel and café owned by Pasquale’s family — all huddled like a herd of sleeping goats in a crease in the sheer cliffs. Behind the village, the rocks rose six hundred feet to a wall of black, striated mountains. Below it, the sea settled in a rocky, shrimp-curled cove, from which the fishermen put in and out every day. Isolated by the cliffs behind and the sea in front, the village had never been accessible by car or cart, and so the streets, such as they were, consisted of a few narrow pathways between the houses — brick-lined roads skinnier than sidewalks, plunging alleys and rising staircases so narrow that unless one was standing in the piazza San Pietro, the little town square, it was possible anywhere in the village to reach out and touch walls on either side. &nbsp; In this way, remote Porto Vergogna was not so different from the quaint cliff-side towns of the Cinque Terre to the north, except that it was smaller, more remote, and not as picturesque. In fact, the hoteliers and restaurateurs to the north had their own pet name for the tiny village pinched into the vertical cliff seam: culo di baldracca — the whore’s crack. Yet despite his neighbors’ disdain, Pasquale had come to believe, as his father had, that Porto Vergogna could someday flourish like the rest of the Levante, the coastline south of Genoa that included the Cinque Terre, or even the larger tourist cities on the Ponente — Portofino and the sophisticated Italian Riviera. The rare foreign tourists who boated or hiked into Porto Vergogna tended to be lost French or Swiss, but Pasquale held out hope the 1960s would bring a flood of Americans, led by the bravissimo U.S. president, John Kennedy, and his wife, Jacqueline. And yet, if his village had any chance of becoming the destinazione turistica primaria he dreamed of, Pasquale knew it would need to attract such vacationers, and to do that, it would need — first of all — a beach. &nbsp; And so Pasquale stood half-submerged, holding a big rock beneath his chin as the red mahogany boat bobbed into his cove. His old friend Orenzio was piloting it for the wealthy vintner and hotelier Gualfredo, who ran the tourism south of Genoa but whose fancy ten-meter sport boat rarely came to Porto Vergogna. Pasquale watched the boat settle in its chop, and could think of nothing to do but call out, “Orenzio!” His friend was confused by the greeting; they had been friends since they were twelve, but they were not yellers, he and Pasquale, more ... acknowledgers, lip-raisers, eyebrow-tippers. Orenzio nodded back grimly. He was serious when he had tourists in his boat, especially Americans. “They are serious people, Americans,” Orenzio had explained to Pasquale once. “Even more suspicious than Germans. If you smile too much, Americans assume you’re stealing from them.” Today Orenzio was especially dour-faced, shooting a glance toward the woman in the back of his boat, her long tan coat pulled tight around her thin waist, her floppy hat covering most of her face. &nbsp; Then the woman said something quietly to Orenzio, and it carried across the water. Gibberish, Pasquale thought at first, until he recognized it as English-American, in fact: “Pardon me, what is that man doing?” &nbsp; From “Beautiful Ruins” by Jess Walter. Copyright © 2012 by Jess Walter. Published by HaperCollins Publishers. &nbsp;

'Beautiful Ruins' excerpt

Excerpt: 'Beautiful Ruins'

ruins - cropped

For our second Newsday Book Club's live chat, we caught up with award-winning author Karen Joy Fowler. 
Read our lively discussion of “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves” (Plume), winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and a Newsday Top Book of 2013. 
In the book, narrator Rosemary Cooke recalls her 1970s Midwestern childhood and the scientific experiment conducted by her father — one involving a chimpanzee — that tore apart her family. 
Fowler offered her thoughts on the book's characters, how she researched the subject matter and more. (App users, click the link above.)

bookclub-2

Live Newsday Book Club chat with 'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves' author Karen Joy Fowler

Chat with Karen Joy Fowler

fowler, book - cropped

EXCERPT 
"We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves," by Karen Joy Fowler 
ONE 
So the middle of my story comes in the winter of 1996. By then, we’d long since dwindled to the family that old home movie foreshadowed — me, my mother, and unseen but evident behind the camera, my father. In 1996, ten years had passed since I’d last seen my brother, seventeen since my sister disappeared. The middle of my story is all about their absence though if I hadn’t told you that, you might not have known. By 1996, whole days went by in which I hardly thought of either one. 
1996. Leap year. Year of the fire rat. President Clinton had just been re-elected; this would all end in tears. Kabul had fallen to the Taliban. The Siege of Sarajevo had ended. Charles had recently divorced Diana. 
Hale-Bopp came swinging into our sky. Claims of a Saturn-like object in the comet’s wake first surfaced that November. Dolly, the cloned sheep, and Deep Blue, the chess-playing computer program, were superstars. There was evidence of life on Mars. The Saturn-like object in Hale-Bopp’s tail was maybe an alien spaceship. In May of ’97, thirty-nine people would kill themselves as a prerequisite to climbing aboard. 
Against this backdrop, how ordinary I look. In 1996, I was twenty-two years old, meandering through my fourth year at the University of California, Davis, and still maybe only a junior or maybe a senior, but so thoroughly uninterested in the niceties of units or requirements or degrees that I wouldn’t be graduating any time soon. My education, my father liked to point out, was wider than it was deep. He said this often. 
But I saw no reason to hurry. I’d no particular ambitions beyond being either widely admired or stealthily influential — I was torn between the two. It hardly mattered, as no major seemed to lead reliably to either. 
My parents, who were still paying my expenses, found me aggravating. My mother was often aggravated those days. It was something new for her, analeptic doses of righteous aggravation. She was rejuvenated by it. She’d recently announced that she was through being translator and go-between for me and my father; he and I had hardly spoken since. I don’t remember minding. My father was a college professor himself and a pedant to the bone. Every exchange contained a lesson, like the pit in a cherry. To this day, the Socratic method makes me want to bite someone. 
Autumn came suddenly that year, like a door opening. One morning I was bicycling to class when a large flock of Canada geese passed overhead. I couldn’t see them or much of anything else, but I heard the jazzy honking above me. There was a tule fog off the fields and I was wrapped inside it, pedaling through clouds. Tule fogs are not like other fogs, not spotty or drifting, but fixed and substantial. Probably anyone would have felt the risk of moving quickly through an unseen world, but I have, or had as a child, a particular penchant for slapstick and mishap, so I took the full thrill from it. 
I felt polished by the wet air and maybe just a little migratory myself, just a little wild. This meant I might flirt a bit in the library if I sat next to anyone flirtable or I might daydream in class. I often felt wild back then; I enjoyed the feeling, but nothing had ever come of it. 
At lunchtime I grabbed something, probably grilled cheese, let’s say it was grilled cheese, in the school cafeteria. I was in the habit of leaving my books on the chair next to me where they could be quickly moved if someone interesting came by, but would discourage the uninteresting. At twenty-two I had the callowest possible definition of interesting and, by the measure of my own calipers, was far from interesting myself. 
From "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves"&nbsp; by Karen Joy Fowler. Reprinted by arrangement with PLUME, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, a Penguin Random House Company. Copyright Karen Joy Fowler, 2014.

et-bookclub-2

'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves' excerpt

fowlerbook-CROPPED

The Newsday Book Club held its first online chat with Alice McDermott, author of the novel “Someone” (FSG), on June 16. McDermott, winner of the National Book Award, had a lot to say about how she writes and how we can read her fiction. Here are 10 things we learned: 
1. She does research after she’s already developed the story. “Research is seductive. You can spend days and weeks ‘looking things up’ and never actually craft a sentence.” 
2. She doesn’t consider Irish-Americans to be her true subject. “I think of these people and this time and place ... as a means to an end: a way to get at the larger subject: what it is to be human, to be mortal, to be part of a family, a community, a mortal world.” 
3. She doesn’t think there’s a “right” way to read her work. “I don’t set out to tell the reader what to think (I don’t work for Fox News), I present the evidence of this single woman’s life and ask you to ponder (as I ponder) the question of both the worth of a single life and the meaning of love.” 
4. Among her many literary inspirations is Vladimir Nabokov. “His sentences made me want to be a writer way back when I was an English major at Oswego State.” 
5. Stories about good people are harder to write than stories about villains. “Sentimentality is a bigger threat to beginning writers than gratuitous violence, graphic sex and unmitigated callousness.” 
6. A writer can’t simply ignore cultural stereotypes. “I’m always setting myself the challenge of writing about familiar characters but making them uniquely themselves — I think it’s one of the wonderful things fiction does for us.” 
7. She often discovers the story as she writes. “I think of working at sentences as a kind of incantation. If I do my best to get the rhythm, the precise language, the detail of each sentence right, then character and story will reveal itself to me.” 
8. Fiction is built on specific details but speaks universally. “Fiction is meant to remind us of what we all feel, I think, even as it reminds us of our own individual experiences.” 
9. Fiction can do it all. “Here’s the thing that makes fiction a far superior art form (compared to film, for instance): fiction can make use of all the senses: touch and taste and smell, as well as sight and hearing.” 
10. A novel is much more than just the plot. “If you read every book only to find out what happens ... then you miss out on the art of it, the thrill of recognizing all the levels of meaning in a gesture, a name, an incident.”

Alice McDermott's Newsday Book Club chat: 10 takeaways from her novel 'Someone'

Book Club: Author insight from Alice McDermott

someone/alice cropped

Avid readers of Newsday’s Books section online and in print can now join the lively conversation at the Newsday Book Club. 
Once a month, from June through August, we convene online to discuss a selected book with its author. The first pick is Alice McDermott’s “Someone” (FSG), a 2013 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction. 
“Someone” offers a portrait, in vivid prose snapshots, of an ordinary Irish American girl as she grows up in Brooklyn, marries, and makes her own modest way in the world. 
McDermott, a Long Island native, joined us for an online chat about her novel. Read the discussion below.

Newsday Book Club: Chat with 'Someone' author Alice McDermott

Newsday Book Club chat with Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott's "Someone" (FSG), a 2013 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction. "Someone" offers a portrait, in vivid prose snapshots, of an ordinary Irish-American girl as she grows up in Brooklyn, marries and makes her own modest way in the world. McDermott, a&nbsp;Long Island native, will join Newsday for its first Book Club chat about the novel, answering reader questions in a live web forum on June 16 from noon to 1 p.m. Sign up for the chat at <a href="http://newsday.com/bookclub" target="_blank">newsday.com/bookclub</a>. 
EXCERPT 
"Someone" by Alice McDermott 
Pegeen Chehab walked up from the subway in the evening light. Her good spring coat was powder blue; her shoes were black and covered the insteps of her long feet. Her hat was beige with something dark along the crown, a brown feather or two. There was a certain asymmetry to her shoulders. She had a loping, hunchbacked walk. She had, always, a bit of black hair along her cheek, straggling to her shoulder, her bun coming undone. She carried her purse in the lightest clasp of her fingers, down along the side of her leg, which made her seem listless and weary even as she covered the distance quickly enough, the gray sidewalk from subway to parlor floor and basement of the house next door. 
I was on the stoop of my own house, waiting for my father. Pegeen paused to say hello. 
She was not a pretty girl particularly; there was a narrowness to her eyes and a wideness to her jaw, crooked teeth, wild eyebrows, and a faint mustache. She had her Syrian father's thick dark hair, but also the permanent scattered flush, just under the fair skin, of her Irish mother's broad cheeks. She had a job in lower Manhattan in this, her first year out of Manual Training, and, she said, she didn't like the people there. She didn't like a single one of them. She ran a bare hand along the stone balustrade above my head. The other, which lightly held the strap of her purse, wore a dove-gray glove. She'd lost its partner somewhere, she said. And laughed with her crooked teeth. Fourth pair this month, she said. 
And left the library book she was reading on the subway yesterday. 
And look, tore her stocking on something. 
She lifted her black shoe to the step where I sat and pulled back the long coat and the skirt. I saw the laddered run, the flesh of Pegeen's thin and dark- haired calf pressing through between each rung. The nail of the finger Pegeen ran over its length was bitten down to nothing, but the movement of her hand along the tear was gentle and conciliatory. A kind of sympathy for her own flesh, which I imitated, brushing my own hand along the unbroken silk of Pegeen's stocking, and then over the torn threads of the run. 
"Amadan," Pegeen said. "That's me. That's what I am." 
She pulled the leg away. The skirt and the blue coat fell into place again. Across the back hem and up the left side of Pegeen's good spring coat there was a long smudge of soot that I impulsively reached out to brush away. "You've got some dirt," I said. Pegeen turned, twisted her chin around, arm and elbow raised, trying to see what she couldn't see because it was behind her. "Where?" she said. 
"Here." I batted at the dirt until Pegeen threw back her head in elaborate frustration, pulling the coat forward, winding it around her like a cloak. "I'll be happy," she said, slapping at her hip, "to stop going to that filthy place." Meaning lower Manhattan, where she worked. 
She paused, put her nose to the air in mock confidence. "I'll get a boyfriend," she said. She batted her eyelashes and drew out a sly smile. They were great kidders, the Chehabs, and no boyfriends, it seemed, had yet called for Pegeen. "I'll get myself married," she said, and then licked all at once the four tall fingers of the gloveless hand and swatted them against the dirty cloth. 
"Amadan," she said again. Which, she explained, was her mother's word for fool. 
And then she released the skirt of her long coat and, dipping her shoulders, shook herself back into it again. She reminded me of a bird taking a sand bath. "I fell down," she announced. She said it in the same fond and impatient tone she had used to describe the lost glove, the forgotten library book. "On the subway." It was the tone a mother might use, speaking about a favorite, unruly child. 
Pegeen blew some exasperated air through her pooched-out lower lip. "I don't know what the blazes makes me fall," she said impatiently. "I do it all the time." She suddenly squinted and the flush just under her downy skin rose to a deep maroon. She lowered her face to mine. "Don't you dare tell my mother," she said. 
I was seven years old. I spoke mostly to my parents. To my brother. To my teachers when I had to. I gave some whispered response to Father Quinn or to Mr. Lee at the candy store when my mother poked me in the ribs. I could not imagine having a conversation with Mrs. Chehab, who was red-haired and very tall. Still, I promised. I would say nothing. 
Pegeen shook herself again, standing back and lifting her shoulders inside the pale blue coat. "But there's always someone nice," she said, her voice suddenly gone singsong. "Someone always helps me up." She struck another pose, coy and haughty, as before, her chin in the air. She touched the feather in her hat. "Today a very handsome man gave me his hand. He asked if I was all right. A real Prince Charming." She smiled again and looked around. Just a few doors down, the older boys were playing stickball in the street. There was a knot of younger ones on the curb, watching. Bill Corrigan was in his chair on the sidewalk just behind them. 
Pegeen leaned forward once more. "Tomorrow," she said breathlessly, whispering now, "I'm going to look for him again. If I see him, I'm going to get real close." She leaned down, her hand on the banister above my head. "I'm going to pretend to fall, see? Right next to him. And he'll catch me and say, 'Is it you again?' " 
All human eyes are beautiful, but Pegeen's were very black and heavily lashed and gorgeous now, with the sparkle of her joke, or her plan, or, perhaps, her vision of some impossible future. 
She straightened up. "We'll see what happens then," she said, sly and confident, her thick eyebrows raised. She swung her purse slowly, turned to move on. "That will be something to see," she said. 
At her own house, Pegeen didn't use the basement door, as usual. She climbed the stone steps, taking them one at a time, like a small child. At the top, she paused again to swat at the back of her coat, only touching the dirt with her wrist. It was early evening. Spring. I could see Pegeen's reflection in the oval glass of the outer door -- or at least the blue heart of the reflection, which was both the reflection of her good spring coat and the evening light on her flushed face. Pegeen pulled open the door and the thin image in the glass shuddered like a flame. 
I turned back to the vigil I was keeping on the stone steps. Vigil for my father, who had not yet come up from the subway. 
From the far corner, the neighborhood's men and working women were coming home. Everyone wore hats. Everyone wore trim dark shoes, which was where my eyes fell when any of them said, "Hello, Marie," passing by. 
At seven, I was a shy child, and comical-looking, with a round flat face and black slits for eyes, thick glasses, black bangs, a straight and serious mouth -- a little girl cartoon. 
With my heart pinned to my father's sleeve in those days. 
The boys were playing stickball down the street. Always at this time of day. Some of them friends of Gabe, my brother, although he, young scholar, remained inside at his books. The younger boys were lined at the curb, watching the game, Walter Hartnett among them. He had his cap turned backward and the leg with the built-up shoe extended before him. Blind Bill Corrigan, who had been gassed in the war, was on the sidewalk just behind Walter, sitting in the painted kitchen chair that his mother set out for him every morning when the weather was fine. 
Bill Corrigan wore a business suit and polished shoes, and although there was a glitch in the skin around his eyes, a scarred shine in the satiny folds of his eyelids, although he was brought to the kitchen chair every afternoon when the weather was fine by his mother, whose arm he held the way a bride holds the arm of a groom, it was to him that the boys in the street appealed whenever a dropped ball or an untimely tag sent both teams, howling and cawing, to his side of the street. They were there now: shouting into one another's face, throwing their caps on the ground, and begging Bill Corrigan to make the call. He raised one of his big, pale hands, and suddenly half the boys spun around, the other half cheered. Walter Hartnett rocked backward in despair, raising his good foot into the air. 
I pushed my glasses back on my nose. Small city birds the color of ashes rose and fell along the rooftops. In the fading evening light, the stoop beneath my thighs, as warm as breath when I first sat down, now exhaled a shallow chill. Mr. Chehab walked by with a brown bag from the bakery in his hand. He had his white apron balled up beneath his arm, the ties trailing. There was the scent of new-baked bread as he passed. Big Lucy, a girl I feared, pushed a scooter along the opposite sidewalk. Two Sisters of Charity from the convent down the street passed by, smiling from inside their bonnets. I turned my head to watch their backs, wondering always why their long hems never caught at their heels. At the end of the block, the Sisters paused to greet a heavy woman with thick, pale legs and a dark apron under her coat. She said something to them that made them nod. Then the three turned the corner together. The game paused again, and the boys parted reluctantly as a black car drove by. 
I shivered and waited, little Marie. Sole survivor, now, of that street scene. Waited for the first sighting of my father, coming up from the subway in his hat and coat, most beloved among all those ghosts. 
Excerpted from "Someone" by Alice McDermott, published in 2013 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2013 by Alice McDermott. All rights reserved.

BKMCDERMOTT18

Newsday Book Club excerpt: 'Someone,' by Alice McDermott

Excerpt: 'Someone,' by Alice McDermott

someone cropped

Newsday

Entertainment trending

Take our quizzes

50 best LI movies

AI's effect on entertainment

Jones Beach summer 2026 concerts

Most Popular

Entertainment Rail Module

The Malverne-raised actor shares L.I. memories ahead of his Café Carlyle shows Sept. 8-19.

Tony Danza stills pack a punch as a singer and actor

Several longtime presenters say they may pull back from future programs after Skolnick's dismissal. The Cinema's board has cited "serious misconduct" but has not publicly explained the allegation.

Presenters pull back after firing of Cinema Arts Centre co-director

The "Mornings With Maria" anchor has departed after 12 years with the network.

Maria Bartiromo and Fox News part ways after more than 12 years

The pop star enjoyed a night of food, friends and photos at Osteria Umbra restaurant.

Delicioso! Ed Sheeran dines in Smithtown

The CBS news veteran will join the morning show starting Tuesday.

Norah O'Donnell returning to 'CBS Mornings'

See Ringo Starr, Roger Daltrey, LI's Zebra and Blue Öyster Cult, and more big shows.

36 fall concerts you won't want to miss

Sign up for Newsday's Entertainment newsletter

Entertainment newsletter widget

Not to mention books about Old Westbury Gardens and an Agatha Christie-ish mystery.

Fall for 12 new books by Jodi Picoult, Ed Burns, others

More Entertainment

Entertainment Article Bottom Module

Kevin Wade has a new crime novel about Bayville Police Chief Jeep Mullane.

LI confidential: 'Blue Bloods' showrunner pens 'One Good Eye'

Learn about the history of the sitcom about idenitcal cousins and how it defined the 1960s.

Hot dogs, crepes Suzette and 'The Patty Duke Show'

You'll find a bag of bestsellers, including the thriller "The Seventh Floor," at 11 Hamptons hotels.

Reading rooms: Bedside Reading fills Hamptons hotels with books

The writer from Dix Hills talks about her tender tale of millennial nostalgia.

Gabrielle Korn takes us on a ride with 'Long Island Girls'

The Floral Park author's book is back with a bonus novella, "My Killer Role."

Beachy keen: Tessa Bailey slays with 'Killer Vacation'

NEWSDAY TV SHORTS

Vertical videos

Some farm stand owners are sharing video footage on social media, citing threats to an ethics code that has guided the East End economy for decades. NewsdayTV's Doug Geed reports.

East End farm stands report thefts, threatening decades-old honor systems

NewsdayTV's Carissa Kellman visits Adventure Paddleboards & Kayaks in East Quogue for a GoBoat adventure.

It's your last chance to book an LI 'bumper boat'

NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa spoke with Robert Sinclair Jr., senior manager of public affairs for AAA Northeast, about some of the best and worst times to travel during the holiday weekend.

What to expect on the roads this Labor Day weekend

NewsdayTV's Doug Geed heads to the North Fork to highlight local East End businesses and give us a behind-the-scenes look at their daily work.

Out East: North Fork Foodie Tour

The Smithtown East boys and girls volleyball teams hosted Smithtown West in what was billed as the first outdoor volleyball matches in Long Island history. NewsdayTV's Christopher Matias reports.

Smithtown East hosts Long Island's first outdoor volleyball match

NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa visits Dom's Famous Chicken Fingers in Plainview.

Trendy Bites: Dom's Famous Chicken Fingers

The plant-eating pests are raising concerns among farmers and winemakers. Newsday reporter Mark Harrington spoke about some potential upcoming solutions.

Spotted lanternflies on the rise

Yogesh "Aadi" Dangol, of Queens Village, was visiting Nepal, where he witnessed and filmed the flood that destroyed his birthplace of Betrawati.

Eyewitness account of the Nepali flood

NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa heads to Mastic Seafood to slice some fish and shuck some oysters on this week's LI Works.

LI Works: Shucking oysters and hauling fish at a local seafood market

It started out as "take a book, leave a book." Now these little libraries have Instagram accounts and mobile apps and are part of a growing, vibrant community. NewsdayTV's Shari Einhorn has the story.

Little Free Libraries are a big deal

Sitewide Video Playlist

Salvadorans on Long Island are preparing for the end of their Temporary Protected Status. The federal humanitarian program that allows immigrants to legally live and work in the United States, expires on Wednesday. NewsdayTV's Shari Einhorn reports.

'I never thought this would happen to them'

For many of the approximately 100,000 Muslims living on Long Island, the deadliest terrorist act committed on U.S. soil — carried out by 19 al-Qaida hijackers — pointed an unwelcome spotlight at them. NewsdayTV's Andrew Ehinger reports.

'Hoping things will be different for my kids and my grandkids'

Recently dismissed charges against two co-defendants in a case after court reporter errors in Grand Jury Transcript. NewsdayTV's Shari Einhorn along with Newdsay Courts Reporter Grant Parpan has more.

'he's been fighting this case since he was arrested'

NewsdayTV's Macy Egeland speaks to actor Gary Sinise about the Wantagh Union Free School District partnering with his foundation to raise money for field trips to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, as well as a commemorative 9/11 statue in front of Wantagh High School.

'To make sure those students never forget'

Construction is in full swing at The Lisle, a 189-apartment building from the Hicksville LIRR station. Tenants who meet income requirements for 19 units will be selected by lottery. NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie reports.

19 apartments at discounted rents

'It's unfortunate'

Healthcare leaders and experts have long suggested that Nassau University Medical Center could improve its finances by selling or leasing real estate. Newsday investigative reporter Peter D'Auria has more.

Ways to fix the future of NUMC

Dylan Skolnick has been fired over what the cinema board believes was 'serious misconduct.' NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports.

'Organizational restructuring'

Balloons, photo-ops and enthusiastic staffers welcomed students at Steele Elementary School in Baldwin to their first day of school, one of 49 Long Island districts returning on Wednesday. NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie reports.

'Be kind, be brave and be smart'

A "super El Niño" is predicted to develop by the summer. NewsdayTV meteorologist Geoff Bansen looks at the likely effects.

'A big change in weather patterns'

Long Island public housing authorities have some of the lengthiest average waits in the country for the subsidized units, a Newsday data analysis shows. NewsdayTV's Doug Geed and Newsday investigative reporter Joshua Solomon have more.

'8, 9 years to get off the waitlist'

App Nativo Ad Unit Slot

Books - megaslot

The latest on Long Island authors, books and literary news, including bestsellers and book reviews and events.

Newsday Book Club

Most Popular

Top Stories

Stay logged in.