Strengths and weaknesses of Someone

Book group was I thought pretty kind to Alice McDermott, this group that often eviscerates contemporary fiction - but there was universal concurrence that she creates a particular scene and milieu - Irish-Catholic immigrant family in working-class Brooklyn in early-to-mid 20th century - with a sense of detail, an ear for the turn of a phrase, and an evocative sensitivity that rivals at times Joyce (cf Dubliners). I was kind of the grump one, arguing that her novel Someone may indeed have many fine passages and promising characters but that it never coheres into a narrative; in fact, I surmised that McDermott probably wrote this novel in fits and starts over many years - and MR confirmed, from an interview she'd read or heard, that I was correct. Well, the novel suffers from that - it feels like fits and starts, both the random chronology and the odd sense of major characters and events introduced but left unresolved. The best example: Pegeen, the neighbor, who from the first pages we think the novel may be about the relationship between narrator, Marie, and Pegeen - but P. dies a few pages farther on. Some argued that these empty spaces in the novel are an effective technique, but I don't concur there. I also argued that a first-person narrator engages in a particular kind of pact with the reader - they have to be telling us their story for a reason, and the omissions have to be willful or telling (a classic case would be Remains of the Day when it comes to narrative omissions). Marie never actually reflects on her life or conveys exactly what she has learned over its course; LR brought up the genre of the bildungsroman, but those always I think involve "a novel of education" - and often are in 3rd person (Tom Jones, for ex.) or, if in first, are very complete and confessional (Jane Eyre, Moll Flanders). RR made a case for a difference between a male and female narration, but I never quite got his point - in what sense or why would omissions in the narration be female? 3rd-person narrative is different - I think of Elizabeth Strout's early fiction which involves many deliberate omissions and ellipses. But a first-person narrator should tell all, or the novelist should make it clear why he or she can't or won't.