Book excerpt: Alice McDermott's brilliant first novel 'One of our finest novelists at work today' LA TIMES 'There's no one like Alice McDermott ... her touch is light as a feather, her perceptions purely accurate' ELLE Elizabeth Connelly sits in a New York office that looks like a real editor's, but isn't quite. Employed at a vanity press, Elizabeth watches the real world - of real struggles, passion, pain and love - spin around her. Until one day, a young writer comes to her with a novel about a man who loves more than one woman at once. And suddenly Elizabeth will be awakened from her young urban professional slumber - by a man's real touch and by a real story in search of an ending. This is a luminous novel of memory, revelation and desire.