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Child of My Heart
By
Alice McDermott
First published 2002
Featured book published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Paperback: 242 pages
ISBN: 0374121230
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The beautiful child of older parents, raised on the eastern end of Long Island among the summer houses of the rich, Theresa is the town's most sought-after babysitter - cheerful, poised - but also a solitary soul already attuned to the paradoxes and compromises of adult life. Among her charges this fateful summer is Daisy, her younger cousin, who has left a crowded working-class household in the city to spend a few quiet weeks under Theresa's benevolent eye. While Theresa copes with the challenge presented by the neighborhood's waiflike children and Daisy's fragility of body and spirit, her precocious, tongue-in-cheek sense of order is put to the test as she makes the perilous crossing into adulthood.
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About Alice McDermott
McDermott received her B.A. in 1975 from the State University of New York at Oswego, and her M.A. in 1978 from the University of New Hampshire. She has taught at the University of California at San Diego and American University, has been a writer-in-residence at Lynchburg and Hollins Colleges in Virginia, and was lecturer in English at the University of New Hampshire. Her short stories have appeared in Ms., Redbook, Mademoiselle, and Seventeen.
The recipient of a Whiting Writers Award, McDermott is currently writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with her husband, a neuroscientist, and three children.
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Selected Works by Alice McDermott
- A Bigamist's Daughter, 1982
- That Night, 1987
- At Weddings and Wakes, 1991
- Charming Billy, 1998
- Child of My Heart, 2002
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From Library Journal
Unfolding like the waves that roll onto the shore of the East End's beaches, this story about 15-year-old Theresa, the only child of understanding if somewhat absent parents, is threaded with foreboding. Theresa, who lives year 'round in East Hampton, narrates a summer she spends with younger cousin Daisy, who is visiting. Poised and mature, Theresa longs to comfort and care for children-to be surrounded by others so as not to be alone. Her days are spent working as a pet and babysitter for various residents, part-time or otherwise. Mostly, she watches the two-year-old daughter of a famous, 70-year-old painter, with Daisy of course in tow. The narrative soon takes on an ominous feel as mysterious bruises start to appear on Daisy's legs and passionate glances from the painter linger on Theresa a little too long. National Book Award winner McDermott's prose is even and elegant, and the complex character of Theresa offers subtle emotion imbued with haunting prescience. Though some of the details about being a local in the Hamptons are slightly off the mark, McDermott's true-to-life evocation of the lazy, sun-soaked summers in such a heaven (albeit a troubled heaven) outweighs this deficit. A nice addition to any literary collection. -Rachel Collins
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