Greed by Kevin McDermott, published by ThickWinter Press

Greed

A Life

by Kevin McDermott

Greed

A Life

by Kevin McDermott

Published Oct 22, 2025
296 Pages
5.5 x 8.5 Black & White Paperback
Genre: FICTION / Literary

Qty:

Find eBook/audiobook editions or buy the paperback or hardback at:

Book Details

Charles Tallack: born 1924, died 2010. A long life. And at its heart an unanswered question.

Greed is a story made of stories. It is about the ways stories—love stories, comic stories, heartbreakers—can make a mess of life and leave us still hungry for more.

Tallack’s stories are of the women who gave him existence in every sense. His mother, pregnant at nineteen, widowed twice before Tallack turns two. Tallack’s wife, Marie, spirited, ambitious, wised up. Tallack’s lifelong comrade in arms, Cynthia Hipsley, whose lasting mark on Tallack is a persisting sense of time suspended. Tallack’s granddaughters, Abbie and Eileen, different from one another as two sisters can be.

Beautifully written, rich in its emotional authenticity and historical texture, Greed has evoked comparison to Richard Russo’s Empire Falls, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral and William Maxwell’s classic So Long, See You Tomorrow.

About the Author

Kevin McDermott

McDermott's first novel, Fortunes Neck, earned comparisons to Elizabeth Strout and Tom Drury. In 2016 Fortunes Neck was a New England Book Festival nominee. It was subsequently nominated for the PEN/New England Award and the American Book Award. McDermott’s second novel, They Imagine Texas, was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Awards.

McDermott’s career has included journalism from France for The Washington Post and Saveur, from England for The New York Times, and from Haiti for The Atlantic. His poems and short stories have appeared on both sides of the Atlantic. A short story drawing on his reporting from Haiti, "Magic & Hidden Things," was listed among the distinguished short fiction in that year's edition of Best American Short Stories. His play, Our Intoxication, was a production of the Manhattan Theatre Festival in New York, where he lives.