I really did not like this story. There wasn't one character I enjoyed. It was so depressing.
This novel tells the story of the down-and-out Fermoyle faily. Living in Vermont in the 1960s, Marie Fermoyle and her three children live in poverty and desperation, for more money, more security, and more affection. Marie Fermoyle, a hardened cynic, is so desperate for all of the above that she falls victim to the wiles of a con man. The Fermoyle children are blatantly aware that their mother is being fleeced, but the emotional distance of all the family members makes it difficult for any of them to communicate or to trust one another. As Marie falls deeper under her now-boyfriend's spell it is the Fermoyle children who feel this lack of communication most acutely. The most difficult character in this book is Marie Fermoyle: cold, cynical, and emotionally abusive towards her children, Marie is clearly a woman who has been deeply wounded and is now striking back, albeit at the wrong people. In this book Morris has crafted a deeply complex narrative with fantastic chracter development. Truly, she has created a whole world in this Vermont town. The characters' lives are richly interwoven with one another, and actions by one reverberate to affect the whole. This is a deeply moving and engaging novel.
A real life cruise of samall-town USA with the top down and the volume up. In her graphic, stiletto chapters, Mary McGarry Morris is a cross between Elizabeth Gaskett and David Lynch." Minneapolis Star Tribune
From Our Editors
Morris, author of A Dangerous Woman, explores the relationship between a trusting, needy divorcée and a shady con man. Raising her children without any support from her alcoholic ex-husband, Marie Fermoyle is lured into Omar Duvall's trap by the glint of promised riches. Marie and her children, troubled by their shabby existence, are no match for Omar's manipulations. Read by the author.
Annotation
A powerfully absorbing novel from the acclaimed author of A Dangerous Woman and Vanished. Set in the summer of 1960--the last of quiet times and America's innocence--this story centers on Marie Fermoyle, a strong but vulnerable Irishwoman, whose loneliness and ambition for her children make her easy prey for a dangerous con-man.
From the Publisher
Songs in Ordinary Time is set in the summer of 1960 - the last of quiet times and America's innocence. It centers on Marie Fermoyle, a strong but vulnerable divorced woman whose loneliness and ambition for her children make her easy prey for the dangerous con man Omar Duvall. Marie's children are Alice, seventeen - involved with a troubled young priest; Norm, sixteen - hotheaded and idealistic; and Benjy, twelve - isolated and misunderstood, and so desperate for his mother's happiness that he hides the deadly truth only he knows about Duvall. Among a fascinating cast of characters we meet the children's alcoholic father, Sam Fermoyle, now living with his senile mother and embittered sister; Sam's meek brother-in-law, who makes anonymous "love" calls from the bathroom of his failing appliance store; and the Klubock family, who - in complete contrast to the Fermoyles - live an orderly life in the perfect house next door.
From The Critics
Publishers Weekly
As she proved in her first novel, Vanished, and in the equally compelling A Dangerous Woman, Morris can depict society's outsiders-people with bleak presents and no futures-with rare understanding and compassion. Here, she portrays an entire community, a small town in Vermont during the summer of 1960, and then focuses on one family, the Fermoyles. With no support from her alcoholic ex-husband Sam, Marie Fermoyle has struggled for eight years to raise her three children. She is sharp-tongued, bitter, resentful and driven nearly to distraction by unending money worries and her own shame at being a poor divorce in a staunchly Catholic town. The arrival of mysterious Omar Duvall with his con man's spiel of sudden riches brings Marie hope that she can change her dead-end existence. Among the 30 or so characters, there are no happy people: in fact, at first, one thinks this will be just an unbroken litany of sour, wasted lives, people mired in frustration and desperation, hiding tawdry secrets. But, although the exposition is long and leisurely, one is soon caught in the web of Morris's narrative, particularly in Marie's manipulation by Duvall, who sponges off the family while appearing to offer Marie the love she desperately craves. Meanwhile, her children-teenaged Alice and Norm, and fearful 12-year-old Benjy-are out-matched by the oily Omar, and they undergo their own torments as adolescents shamed by their parents and miserably conscious of their poverty. Innocent Benjy holds a secret so terrible he doesn't even fathom it until it is almost too late to avert tragedy. Morris weaves the taut strands of her plot with remarkable skill, revealing how people with no financial security and few mental resources are controlled by others more feral and more dangerous. Throughout, she maintains the suspense triggered by a dead body in the woods, and she pries open a Pandora's box of secrets, including double lives and the hypocrisy that masks sin behind piety. This novel becomes more powerful as one reads, building to a heartstopping denouement, yet remaining strictly observant of the minutiae of daily life that give the book its honesty and pathos.
Library Journal
These charaters have hopes and dreams, very similar to our own.
Songs in Ordinary Time often seems to be a quite simple and ordinary story about simple, troubled people but the underlying originality of these characters and how easily they relate to the reader will pull you in. From the first paragraphs of this story, readers will be intrigued by the interesting lives and stories where mysteries are left unsaid and the readers imagination is left to wonder. This is a story with multiple viewpoints of an entire community of people whose lives and decisions overlap each others in interesting and surprising ways. Readers will find themselves pulled into every aspect of these characters lives as they relate to them. All the characters in this book have the same underlying desires in life: the desire to make their way in the world the desire to do something great with their life the need to make a good living for themselves and their families and to find happiness and love. These simple qualities and desires every character hopes for in different, interesting, and beautiful ways. Once you start reading this book you cant stop without knowing whether or not these characters will fulfill their hopes, dreams and desires. Every character is searching and is on such a different path in life that will keep the pages turning. Part of the enjoyment of reading this book is to watch and grow with the characters and to discover how to find enjoyment in a seemingly uninteresting period of their lives.
