Almost Home [Hardcover]

T.m. Mcnally (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 1998

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 in the town's wild crowd, Patrick spends lonely days in school and works the graveyard shift at a local gas station. His isolation ends with the arrival of Elizabeth, a talented musician with family problems of her own. The depth of their feelings emerges when a drug-dealing co-worker involves Patrick in a scheme that not only tests his courage but his loyalty -- to his family, to the memory of his father, and to Elizabeth. Almost Home is an engaging exploration of the relationships between coincidence and providence, betrayal and forgiveness, love and salvation.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Shy Patrick McConnell, the hero of this richly detailed, sorrowful bildungsroman, moves to Paradise Valley, Ariz., with his mother, older sister and dog in the wake of his father's suicide and then watches his family fall apart as his sister also becomes suicidal and his mother retreats into an alcoholic haze. Fortunately, his dog, Germs, loves him unconditionally, and they escape periodically to compete in regional dog shows. Patrick also falls deeply in love with Elizabeth, a pretty classmate with a more benignly dysfunctional family life, and the two provide sanctuary for one other. Meanwhile, he works at a gas station with Elizabeth's delinquent ex-boyfriend, Bittner, a suspected drug-dealer who beat up Patrick before they became friends. Everything in Patrick's world seems precarious, ready to collapse or turn bad in an instant. A winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction, McNally (Until Your Heart Stops) captures much of the desperation and sad transience of young adulthood, and his renderings of Patrick's loving relationships are poignant and convincing. Many of the symptoms of family breakdown, however, are a bit hackneyed (and the shifts in narrative voice between chapters are often more disruptive than illuminating), but the novel succeeds memorably in playing out an interesting battle between the powers of love and despair.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Remember your senior year of high school? Those achingly slow days between the ending of one life and the beginning of another are perfectly captured by McNally here. The year is 1978, and Patrick McConnell continues his senior year in Paradise Valley, AZ, after his father's suicide. It's Patrick who keeps his family together while his mother begins a slow descent into alcoholism and his sister medicates herself with sex and drugs before leaving home. Understandably, he is counting the days before college, hoping to "leave on terms, which will permit return, someday later, after [his mom] is better." His girlfriend, Elizabeth, has her own struggles with her family, as she fights for independence from her overprotective parents. This beautifully written novel eloquently depicts the restless energy and sentimentality of teenagers who have nothing but hope in their pockets as they face the future. With strong writing and an emphasis on realism, McNally (Until Your Heart Stops, Random, 1993) displays a fine understanding of his urban Southwestern setting and his characters. Recommended.ACharlotte L. Glover, Ketchikan P.L., AK
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1ST edition (June 5, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684844699
• ISBN-13: 978-0684844695
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,872,263 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tender and wrenching,, July 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Almost Home (Hardcover)

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.

4.0 out of 5 stars Expertly written, even if the plot does leave you a bit unsatisfied., April 23, 2010

By 

Ian D. Larson "psimitry" (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Almost Home: A Novel (Paperback)

T.m. Mcnally is an excellent writer. He has a style that is clear, easy to read, and keeps a reader interested throughout the entire book (in this case, "Almost Home"). He handles such topics such as teenage sexuality with a dignity and restraint, so as not to become gratuitous or pointlessly sexual, but explicit enough to evoke the proper emotion that one might have experiencing the act.

The book is so well written that the only real problem is that when finished reading, you find yourself wishing there were more. And I think that a little more might have really served this particular work well. Though the plots themselves are mostly resolved to satisfaction, I found myself mostly through the entire book bracing for a great tragedy that links the two characters as described by a synopsis I read. When it doesn't come (or maybe it did but was not very apparent), I found myself a little let down.

Still, an excellent read and an excellent example of modern American literature.

4.0 out of 5 stars Groping in the Dark in a High School Courtship, February 7, 2007

By 

Constant Weeder "batttman" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Almost Home : A Novel (Paperback)

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.