Dancing On Graves

By Jill Smolowe

TITLE: AT WEDDINGS AND WAKES

AUTHOR: ALICE MCDERMOTT

PUBLISHER: FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX 213 PAGES; $19

THE BOTTOM LINE: McDermott secures her reputation as a mesmerizing storyteller

IT GIVES NOTHING AWAY TO REVEAL that near the end of Alice McDermott's lyrical novel At Weddings and Wakes, there is a joyous wedding celebration. The bride, an aging ex-nun, allows herself to be swirled by her staid groom, a mailman who unexpectedly proves a sure-footed dancer. Even Momma, the embittered matriarch of the Irish-American Towne clan, permits herself a few sentimental tears. But when the party ends, Momma reminds the Roman Catholic celebrators that they have been "dancing on graves." Four days later, there will be a fresh grave to dig -- that of May, the autumn bride -- and the family will sink back into the regret and loss that threaten to smother three generations of Townes.

With her third novel, McDermott secures her reputation as a mesmerizing and innovative storyteller. In the haunted world that she conjures, dead relatives command greater attention than the living. It is a measure of the author's formidable skills that she vividly evokes the misery of Momma Towne and her four stepdaughters without suffocating the reader in their chronic gloom. While the backdrop is one of complaint, cryptic exchanges -- "That again? Are we rehashing that again?" -- are enough to remind us of the women's litany. Their oppressive unhappiness is artfully offset by the vitality of the three youngest Townes, who, like flowers that bloom in urban sidewalk cracks, fight for life.

As in her memorable second novel, That Night, McDermott boldly scrambles time, surrounding the story's central incident -- May's death -- with past and future events. By serving early warning of May's death, the author invests all that follows with poignancy.

The most perplexing stepdaughter is Lucy, who marries a patient, loving man. Although the couple move to Long Island and have three children, Lucy's thoughts never stray far from Momma. Each week she returns to her stepmother's Brooklyn apartment, where she complains that her husband "is not the man I married." No hint of the husband's failing is offered, but one suspects he sins only in offering Lucy no tragedy around which to shape her life.

For Lucy's children, however, McDermott offers a life-affirming lesson that promises to puncture the family's despair. As May's wedding day ends and her death approaches, a relative begins a drunken lament of the family's woes. Suddenly a young cousin huffs, "Who cares? Who really cares?" With that brushstroke, McDermott points the way toward a brighter future.