THE NINTH HOUR by Alice McDermott

This novel is largely a celebration of nuns, particularly nuns who administer to those who can’t, or won’t, help themselves.  Annie’s husband Jim kills himself after losing his job, leaving Annie in a burned out apartment with a baby on the way.  The nuns put her to work in their laundry after Sally is born.  Sally so admires the nuns she grows up with that she decides to become one herself, but we know that she eventually changes her mind, since the book is narrated by one or more of her offspring.  This novel begins and ends with a death, and not a lot happens in the middle.  There are three big events in this novel:  Jim’s suicide, Sally’s trip to her assigned convent in Chicago and the shock she receives on returning home (one big event, according to me), and the death at the end of the novel, with all of the shenanigans surrounding that death.  I love McDermott’s writing style, but that’s just not enough.  The characters, almost all women, are rather vanilla, although Sally’s mother Annie has a defiant streak that doesn’t manifest itself right away.  Sally, on the other hand, has good intentions, but we really only know her as a solitary child and then a naïve teenager who makes a couple of bad choices.  This book is very readable, but, despite the dramatic and promising beginning, the pace is snail-like.  It contains a lot of references to laundry, starch, and ironing, and I’m sure all of this washing and drying of clothes and linens is some sort of symbol, but I just can’t identify what it is.  Cleansing of sins maybe?  Several commandments are broken here, and the question raised in the novel is whether these transgressions will prohibit the person from getting into heaven.  In at least one case, the transgressor is not penitent.  I’m guessing that’s a showstopper, but I’ll have to ask a Catholic.