Reading List

Authors Like Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott was born in Brooklyn in 1953 and went to Catholic schools on Long Island. Charming Billy (1998), which won the National Book Award, opens in a Bronx bar-and-grill twenty minutes from the cemetery, where the mourners of Billy Lynch, a lifelong drinker, gather after his funeral. The Ninth Hour (2017) begins on a dim winter afternoon in Brooklyn, when a young Irish immigrant named Jim, just fired from his subway job, turns on the gas in his tenement and leaves his pregnant wife to the care of nursing nuns. Absolution (2023) moves to Saigon in 1963 and the American wives there. Three of her novels were Pulitzer Prize finalists, and she taught at Johns Hopkins from 2002 to 2019. The ten writers below share her ground: Irish and Catholic families, faith and its failures, and lives told by the people who watched them.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Irish-American families · Catholic fiction · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

The closest matches to Alice McDermott are Colm Tóibín, whose Brooklyn (2009) follows Eilis Lacey from Enniscorthy to the borough McDermott writes about, Anne Enright, whose Booker-winning The Gathering (2007) brings a family together for the wake of a brother who drank, and Mary Gordon, who grew up in an Irish Catholic neighbourhood of Queens and debuted with Final Payments (1978). Further down are a Catholic convert who wrote about sin and doubt, and an Irish writer whose novella shows what a convent could hide.

10 authors like Alice McDermott

01
The gathering and the dead

James Joyce

Irish · Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

Joyce was born in Rathgar, Dublin, in 1882 and spent most of his adult life abroad; he died in Zurich in 1941. Dubliners ends with ‘The Dead’, set at the Morkan sisters' annual dance on the Feast of the Epiphany, where Gabriel Conroy learns that his wife, Gretta, still grieves for a boy called Michael Furey. Ulysses followed in 1922.

‘The Dead’ and Charming Billy both use a gathering to let the living talk about someone they have lost. Joyce suits readers who want the Irish source of McDermott's world.

— Lisanne

Every book by James Joyce →

02
A Brooklyn tenement childhood

Betty Smith

American · A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), Joy in the Morning (1963)

Smith was born Elisabeth Wehner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 1896. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows Francie Nolan, a girl largely based on Smith herself, growing up in a Brooklyn tenement; its working title was They Lived in Brooklyn. She died in 1972.

Smith and McDermott both write about poor Brooklyn families in the early twentieth century, the world of The Ninth Hour. Smith suits readers who want that world seen through a child.

— Lisanne
03
Catholicism with doubt

Graham Greene

English · Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The End of the Affair (1951)

Greene was born in Berkhamsted in 1904 and was received into the Catholic Church in 1926; he later called himself a ‘Catholic agnostic’. In 1953 the Vatican's Holy Office complained that The Power and the Glory, about a fugitive priest in Mexico, damaged the reputation of the priesthood. He died in Switzerland in 1991.

Greene and McDermott both write about Catholic faith from the inside, but Greene's characters sin, despair and argue with God. Read him for the darker, more dramatic version of her subject.

— Lisanne

Every book by Graham Greene →

04
Quiet Irish lives

William Trevor

Irish · Fools of Fortune (1983), Felicia's Journey (1994), The Story of Lucy Gault (2002)

Trevor was born William Trevor Cox in Mitchelstown, County Cork, in 1928 and lived in England from 1954, latterly in Devon. He won the Whitbread award three times, the last for Felicia's Journey, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize four times. His stories appeared in The New Yorker. He died in 2016.

Trevor and McDermott both write small Irish lives with patience and without judgement. He suits readers who love her short, quiet scenes and want them in story form.

— Lisanne

Every book by William Trevor →

05
Catholic daughters of New York

Mary Gordon

American · Final Payments (1978), The Company of Women (1981), The Shadow Man (1996)

Gordon was born in Far Rockaway, Queens, in 1949, grew up in a largely Irish Catholic neighbourhood and went to Catholic schools; she teaches at Barnard College. Her debut, Final Payments, was a New York Times bestseller. In the memoir The Shadow Man she investigates her father, a convert from Judaism who, she discovered, had published antisemitic journalism.

Gordon and McDermott are near contemporaries from the same Catholic New York, and both write about women shaped by the Church they were raised in.

— Lisanne
06
Faith as daily life

Marilynne Robinson

American · Housekeeping (1980), Gilead (2004)

Robinson was born in Sandpoint, Idaho, in 1943 and taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop from 1991 to 2016. Gilead, centred on a Congregationalist minister, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005. Her interest in John Calvin runs through her novels, and Reading Genesis appeared in 2024.

Robinson and McDermott both treat religious faith as an ordinary part of daily life rather than a subject for argument. Robinson's tradition is Protestant, which makes her a useful contrast.

— Lisanne

Every book by Marilynne Robinson →

07
The wake that opens a family

Anne Enright

Irish · The Gathering (2007), The Green Road (2015), The Wren, The Wren (2023)

Enright was born in Dublin in 1962. The Gathering, which won the Man Booker Prize, is narrated by Veronica Hegarty as her large family gathers in Dublin for the wake of her brother Liam, an alcoholic who drowned himself at Brighton. She was the first Laureate for Irish Fiction, from 2015 to 2018.

The Gathering and Charming Billy both start from the death of a man who drank and work back through a family's memory. Enright is blunter about sex and damage, which suits readers who want the same story told more harshly.

— Lisanne

Every book by Anne Enright →

08
From Enniscorthy to Brooklyn

Colm Tóibín

Irish · The Master (2004), Brooklyn (2009), Long Island (2024)

Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, in 1955. Brooklyn follows Eilis Lacey from Enniscorthy to New York and was filmed in 2015; its sequel, Long Island, takes her back to Enniscorthy. He has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times.

Tóibín writes the Irish emigrant arrival that sits behind many of McDermott's families, in a similarly restrained style. Read Brooklyn alongside The Ninth Hour for the crossing and what follows it.

— Lisanne

Every book by Colm Tóibín →

09
A town told in many lives

Elizabeth Strout

American · Olive Kitteridge (2008), My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016), Tell Me Everything (2024)

Strout was born in Portland, Maine, in 1956. Olive Kitteridge won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009, and Tell Me Everything brings Olive, Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess together in the town of Crosby, Maine. Her newest novel, The Things We Never Say, was published in May 2026.

Strout and McDermott both build a community from overlapping lives seen in small domestic moments. Strout's world is small-town Maine rather than Catholic New York.

— Lisanne

Every book by Elizabeth Strout →

10
What the convent hid

Claire Keegan

Irish · Foster (2010), Small Things Like These (2021)

Keegan was born in 1968 and grew up on a farm in County Wicklow. Small Things Like These follows Bill Furlong, a coal merchant in New Ross in December 1985, who begins to suspect that the local convent hides an abusive Magdalene laundry. It was the shortest book ever shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 2022, and won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

McDermott's nuns in The Ninth Hour nurse the sick poor; Keegan's run a laundry that imprisons girls. Read her for the other face of the Church that McDermott's novels honour.

— Lisanne

Every book by Claire Keegan →

Where to start if you loved Alice McDermott

If you liked Charming Billy, read Anne Enright.

The Gathering (2007): a family, a wake and a brother who drank.

If you liked The Ninth Hour, read Claire Keegan.

Small Things Like These (2021): a convent in 1985 Ireland and what it hides.

If you want Irish Brooklyn, read Colm Tóibín.

Brooklyn (2009): a young woman from Enniscorthy in New York.

If you want faith as daily life, read Marilynne Robinson.

Gilead (2004): a minister's story, Pulitzer Prize 2005.

If you have read only Charming Billy, try McDermott's Absolution (2023).

American wives in Saigon in 1963; winner of the 2024 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Alice McDermott

Who writes like Alice McDermott?

Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright and William Trevor write about Irish families at home and abroad. Mary Gordon and Betty Smith write about Irish Catholic and working-class New York.

What should I read after Charming Billy?

Anne Enright's The Gathering (2007) also starts from the death of a man who drank. James Joyce's ‘The Dead’, the last story in Dubliners (1914), is the classic version of a gathering haunted by the dead.

Does Alice McDermott have a new book?

Her most recent novel is Absolution (2023), set in Saigon in 1963. It won the 2024 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Which Alice McDermott book should I read first?

Charming Billy (1998), which won the National Book Award, is the usual way in. The Ninth Hour (2017) is the place to start for her nuns and early twentieth-century Brooklyn.

Is Alice McDermott like Colm Tóibín?

Both write about Irish Catholic families and emigrants to Brooklyn. Tóibín's Brooklyn (2009) tells the crossing from Ireland, while McDermott's novels mostly stay with families already in New York.

Has Alice McDermott won the Pulitzer Prize?

No. Three of her novels, That Night, At Weddings and Wakes and After This, were Pulitzer Prize finalists; Charming Billy won the National Book Award in 1998.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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