McDermott and McGarry: The Ruth and Gehrig of Irish-American fiction

Was very pleased to see story in current New Yorker, Someone, by Alice McDermott, for a # of reasons - have admired her work, but haven't really thought of her as a short-story writer (and this piece, though it stands alone well, may be part of her forthcoming novel, who knows?) - and was delighted to see that she is the Richard A. Macksey Professor at JHU - Dr. Macksey was by far my favorite professor when I was a student at Hopkins many years ago; oddly, I had very recently mentioned him in a post on Proust, and then his name comes up again - I am glad to see that he has an endowed chair in his name. As for McDermott, she and my old friend Jean McGarry must be a great team in Hopkins writing - between the two of them they have Irish-American urban families and girlhood pretty much locked up - McGarry a bit more of an avant-garde writer and more focused on shorter forms and McDermott more mainstream and focused on the longer forms. I recommend both authors to anyone! McDermott's story Someone is a great example of her themes and her style: a rather plain woman in Brooklyn (I think) in the 40s or so gets "courted" by a guy whom, we can see (and so can she) from the top is a no-good social climber - he cruelly dumps her - and she falls into deep sadness, and gets somewhat consoled by older brother who's left priesthood and has deep sadness of his own. Like all McDermott's work, it's filled with evocative period detail, with the sorrows of struggling families and ordinary people, and with mysterious intimations of grace. One very nice touch in this story is that, in a single paragraph, she steps way forward and looks back and gives is a tiny glimpse of this woman's life in the future - not as bleak as it may have seemed that terrible day when she faced a tremendous personal cruelty.