The Ninth Hour

The characters make this book stand out. The nuns of the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor, Congregation of Mary Before the Cross who ‘appeared in every household whenever crisis or illness disrupted the routine, whenever a substitute was needed for She Who Could Not Be Replaced’. Women of all sorts who became nuns and gave up (but didn’t, of course, entirely forget) their earlier connections, families, personal circumstances to devote their lives to service. They remain individuals and it is for this that I loved them.

Into this world is born Sally, the daughter of a woman tragically widowed and then employed by the convent as a laundress. She has a happy childhood, heavily influenced by these wonderful women, and who would not expect her to consider becoming a nun herself? A long, trying, overnight train journey, though, convinces her otherwise, ‘showed her that her own impulse was to meet its filthy citizens not with a consoling cloth, but with a curse, a punch in the face’. This only serves to underline the difficulties, the squalor and the pain the nuns dealt with every day and it is how they dealt with them in their very individual, and surprisingly non-judgemental, ways that touched me. Not a Catholic myself, I found reading this story a moving and genuinely uplifting experience.

Some lovely writing and insight into human nature. One particular passage stands out from the occasion of an old man’s dying, his children reflecting on their father’s and grandfather’s lives:

‘…it was history we were talking about so comfortably, here at the end of our father’s days and the new waning of our own. History was easy: the past with all loss burned out of it, all sorrow worn out of it - all that was merely personal comfortably removed.’

This was my introduction to McDermott, and a wonderful one it was. I started and finished the book in a single day because it captured my interest immediately and that interest never flagged. I suspect part of the attraction came from my having been raised Catholic and so much of the book brought back memories of the church and of the nuns in my life (including my older sister). Each character - Annie, Sally, Sister Jeanne, Sister Illuminata, and more - is well developed, as is how their lives influence one another. It's about family, it's about Catholicism and nuns, it's about Brooklyn, it's about struggles, and it's about love. Very well done. McDermott's books have now been added to my "to read" list.

Set in the early 20th century, Alice McDermott crafts a world around the Catholic nuns of Brooklyn. We witness the suicide of Jim, a young husband and father to be and how the nuns offer solace and employment to his widow Annie and new baby daughter Sally. We follow the lives of Annie and Sally, as they intertwine with the lives of the nuns in a beautifully woven narrative. The story is about not judging the actions of people, the nuns themselves do not do this, and in themselves they recognise the flaws of man. A carefully crafted story, gentle and easy to read.

Reading 'The Ninth Hour' was like being transported back to childhood, when stories about Catholic nuns were tremendously appealing to me. They still are. Though this isn't just about a community of nuns. The heart of this beautifully written novel is the universal heart of every human story: people struggling with issues of life and death and everything in-between.

Grief, sorrow, sadness and pain are threads linking the characters together, as is the dire sickness and poverty in Brooklyn during the 1940s and 1950s, where the story takes place and the Little Nursing Sisters Of The Sick Poor tend the wounded with mercy and grace.

The characters are warmly drawn and totally believable. There are no perfect people here. All are subject to the vagaries of life, needing to make compromises as they act out of their own fierce compassion and kindness toward others, or with a degree of self-interest instead.

Very aptly, for a book named after the biblical hour when Jesus cried out and breathed his last, this intriguing novel opens with a death. The shame of Jim’s suicide greatly affects his pregnant wife, Annie, and significantly alters the lives of future generations to come.

But despite the dark nature of the narrative at times, the author's deft storytelling, spare prose and lightness of touch, laced with episodes of wry humour, make this a fascinating glimpse into hardship and faith and an enjoyable read from start to finish. Highly recommended.