"Charming Billy" - Character and the Meaning of the Novel

Prompt #2 - Though Billy Lynch is the title character of the novel, "Charming Billy" presents several other well-rounded characters. Choose a character other than Billy and discuss the methods the author uses to create him/her. How does your character contribute to the meaning of the novel?

One character who I personally find interesting, intriguing, and connected to the meaning of Alice McDermott's novel "Charming Billy" is Matt West, the lover, fiance, and husband of the narrator. I find both the narrator - Dennis and Claire's daughter - and Matt to be incredibly interesting characters because we know so little about them, yet they are a part of what propels the story. McDermott only provides us with their characterization in bits and pieces. Our first glimpse of Matt is only a leather bracelet on a thin wrist, and most of what we know about the narrator is pieced together from her stories, her father's life, the questions people ask her when she's at Maeve's house after the funeral.

The way Matt is told to us is only really through other's stories, the same way Billy is. These two characters are connected in that way, even though their plots barely intertwine. The only scene they share is when Mr. West comes to pick things up from the shed behind the summer house, and Matt extends a hand out the car window, Billy sitting on the front step. This is their only interaction, yet they still manage to be undoubtedly linked. Not only does Matt marry Billy's cousin's daughter, making him a part of the far-branching family, but both of these characters revolve around the beach house. A quote near the end of the book reflects this, what part Matt plays in the main theme, and in Billy's story. It says, "It was, in those days, the way we all spoke about love: world-wise, open-eyed, without illusion. Lying, of course. Because what we truly believed in that moment - would believe on and off again for the rest of our lives - was that the whole history of Holtzman's little house - from its bankrupt builder to my grandmother's greed to your parents' bitter marriage - was, on this night, with our own meeting, redeemed." This idea that all the love - or the variations and avoidance of love - has been channeled into this house is what I believe to be a driving force in "Charming Billy." This house is where Billy met Eva, where Dennis and Mary's affair went awry. Even its resurrection was based off of the business-like marriage between Sheila and Holtzman. It makes sense that at the end of the book, with this end of an era and the final piece in the narrators puzzle.