Almost Home

By T.M. McNally

Book Overview

Patrick, his sister, and his mother have come to Paradise Valley, Arizona, in the bitter aftermath of his father's suicide. As his mother turns to alcohol for solace and his sister finds companionship... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684854457
• ISBN13: 9780684854458
• Release Date: May 1999
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Groping in the Dark in a High School Courtship

I found this novel a strange read. On the surface it's a coming of age novel set in a high school in Phoenix. It's tentacles reach back into the family histories of the two courting youngsters, and as the atmosphere darkens, violence descends. Interestingly, the author refers to the Lincoln Savings scandal of the late 1980s which wiped out thousands of depositors who thought they were investing in government insured securities. But he ties former Senator Barry Goldwater to the scandal when in fact it was Senator John McCain who became one of the so-called Keating Five, senators who got the government to help Charlie Keating continue his multimillion dollar con game. I liked the alternation of subjects in each chapter--keeps the story line moving.

Beautiful prose, smart complicated people: lovely book

McNally's Almost Home is a small gem: he writes about his principal characters with grace and empathy, and their struggles, and heartaches are all-too-real. Phoenix is the setting and McNally takes full advantage of the desert city's metaphorical possibilities, without ever thumping us over the head. It is so refeshing to read a literary novel so richly sophisticated (structurally and technically) that is also still a page-turner, still a great, moving STORY.I highly recommend this book--

Absolutely Beautiful, Heartbreaking

It is engrossing, deliciously written, and it is certainly alive. McNally's grasp of the adolescent subculture is dead on; his grasp of humanity is more accurate still. 'Almost Home' will profoundly affect you.

Just a great book, as moving as anything I've read this summ

McNally is terrific at capturing the emotions of adolescence and his books transcend any stereotypical audience. They're all terrific and Almost Home is no exception. It's moving, uplifting and sad all in one.

Tender and wrenching,

T.M. McNally is an immensely humane writer. His small body of work displays an ever-deepening concern with the emotions which shape us, the situations which warp us, and the people with whom we try to find our hearts. This book concerns two teenagers, but it is not a typical coming-of-age story, fraught with angst and TV-like plot points of misunderstanding and resolution. Nor is it an attempt to shock larger society with false revelations of "real" teenage problems and passions. Elizabeth and Patrick are as fully realized as any characters in recent literary novels; they simply happen to be in their teens. The narrative alternates between Patrick's reminiscences from the distance of his thirties, and direct narration from the two as the events occur. McNally manages to make this potentially unwieldy time-structure feel just right, as he mixes a more mature emotional perspective with the youthful ones; the result is something I have not often read, but have lo! ng looked for: a serious emotional limning of youth. It manages to cover kegger parties with the same careful, accurate eye as it does the death of a parent. His prose is impeccably lyrical and supple, which heightens the memory-like strength of the story. This book is quiet, but its quietness conceals a heart as honest and huge as the Arizona desert surrounding the characters' artificially lush suburb.