Herself, Of Course

New York, 1980. For Victoria, life is only just starting. On a hot afternoon, she sits uncomfortably on a radiator as an attractive older man takes her photo for the publication of her first novel. Something sparks in the hot air, and the afternoon becomes a night exploring the city together: meeting her writing heroine at a party, escaping for martinis, eating dumplings in Chinatown, ordering espresso in Little Italy, and riding the Staten Island ferry back and forth and back again. When we measure out our lives, which are the encounters that change us? What does the female artist have to sacrifice to live the life she needs to? What does it mean to become an adult and to grow old, not simply as a woman but as an artist and a reader?As we follow Victoria (or V., or later, Vicky) through the years, through love, loss and a final encounter with one of the ghosts of her past, we live life as it is lived: in long arcs of triumph, sorrow and regret.Heartbreaking and consoling, bittersweet and wise, Herself, Of Course confirms McDermott as a masterful chronicler of the human experience.Praise for Alice McDermott'Beautifully written, heart-wrenching and funny' SUNDAY TIMES'One of our greatest writers' ANN PATCHETT'Her writing has a luminous kind of clarity' RACHEL JOYCE'For four decades, McDermott has written one exquisite novel after another' ESQUIRE