AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of the Year by Amazon, TIME, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Oprah Daily, Real Simple, and Vogue
"Alice McDermott has always been one of our greatest writers but here she exceeds every expectation. Absolution is one of the finest contemporary novels I've read. It is a moral masterpiece." —Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House
“Enveloping . . . Retrospect amplifies McDermott’s narrative approach; her work lives in its shimmering details . . . The debacle of America’s involvement in Vietnam might easily have overdetermined McDermott’s story, and it is a measure of her skill that Absolution maintains an oblique relationship to the war . . . What difference might it have made, for everyone, if those wives had been given a choice in the decision-making? Without posing this question directly, Absolution leaves the reader in its provocative shadow.” —Jennifer Egan, The New York Times
"With Absolution, Alice McDermott delivers another elegantly written, immaculately conceived novel that immerses the reader in the contradictions and moral ambiguities of the human heart. McDermott is a storyteller who aims for the stars. Absolution takes us there, by way of wartime Saigon, and with a powerful reminder that good intentions can have consequences that jerk us awake over a lifetime. What a splendid, compelling book this is." —Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried
"[McDermott] has taken the worn tapestry of the war novel and turned it inside out, exposing the original colors and throwing the battles and bivouacs into stark relief." —Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times
"Crystalline, searching . . . McDermott spins gold from sensuous details . . . Beautifully conceived and executed, Absolution stares down the assumptions and loyalties that cage us all." —Hamilton Cain, The Washington Post
"It's futile to predict where a great writer's boundless imagination will take us and, as Absolution affirms, McDermott is a great writer . . . McDermott possesses the rare ability to evoke and enter bygone worlds—pre-Vatican II Catholicism, pre-feminist-movement marriages—without condescending to them. She understands that the powerhouses can dominate the helpmeets. She also understands that playing God is the role of a lifetime—and every human actor should turn it down." —Maureen Corrigan, NPR
"For four decades now, McDermott has written one exquisite novel after another, but her latest, a poignant tale of women and girls living on the periphery of the Vietnam War, may just be her masterpiece . . . In this richly imagined novel, packed with unforgettable characters, McDermott soars in a profound quest of moral inquiry." —Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
"Powerful . . . Sharp-eyed . . . [Absolution] addresses the question of forgiveness on both a personal and political level. Few writers have written about moral qualms with such sensitivity." —Heller McAlpin, The Christian Science Monitor
"Evocative and masterly . . . McDermott captures the convolutions of social dynamics and the mutability of memory with brilliant aplomb and attention to detail." —Sharlene Teo, The Guardian
“A work of consistently beautiful prose . . . McDermott, who can easily build dramatic urgency out of even the most mundane tasks, evokes an eerie sense of instability and future implosion . . . The question of how to help others—and how much it costs to do so . . . is ever-present for Charlene and Patricia, who maintain, in the brief time when their lives overlap, a bizarre, conflicted, co-dependent friendship that is utterly fascinating.” —Jackie Thomas-Kennedy, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"For more than 40 years, McDermott’s deep understanding of human nature and wizardry in creating characters has been the seedbed of one bestselling, award-winning novel after another. Now she has outdone herself with an exquisitely conceived and executed novel that explores her signature topic, moral obligation, against the backdrop of the fraught time preceding the Vietnam War . . . This transporting, piercing, profound novel is McDermott’s masterpiece." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Sublime . . . McDermott is a resplendent writer of lacerating insights, gorgeous lyricism, and subtle yet exacting moral reckoning, here illuminating shades of good and evil within a bubble of Western privilege and prejudice in a country on the brink of war, concentrating the inane and cruel misogyny women faced in Barbie, that freshly energized icon of female paradox and power.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (Starred Review)
"Damning and dazzling, this is the story of a Vietnam we never got in history class—a story of innocence lost, the bounds of womanhood tested, and our nation held to account." —Charley Burlock, Oprah Daily
08/28/2023
McDermott (The Ninth Hour) unfurls an evocative character study of American women in 1963 Saigon. Newlywed Tricia, a young woman of blue-collar stock whose lawyer husband works for Naval Intelligence, is out of her element among the socialites of her new milieu. She’s mentored by the sophisticated Charlene, an oil magnate’s wife who hosts martini lunches and devises altruistic if misguided aid schemes (one fundraiser involves selling Barbie dolls dressed in traditional Vietnamese garb). Tricia grows fond of Rainey, Charlene’s little girl, and much of the book unfolds in present day letters and conversations between Tricia and Rainey, the younger woman having contacted Tricia after meeting an American Vietnam War veteran who knew her and Charlene. McDermott finds her groove when she has Tricia reexamining her time in Saigon, where the women around her slipped into prescribed roles without questioning their submissiveness. A poignant conclusion shows how Charlene supported Tricia back in the ’60s after Tricia’s miscarriage (“I did not want to be the sort of woman who had a miscarriage. Didn’t want to be a part of that simpering sorority, a keeper of that shameful secret,” she narrates). In McDermott’s powerful story, the quest for absolution falls just beyond her characters’ grasp. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Company. (Nov.)
★ 2023-07-26
The complicated, unseen lives of American corporate wives in Saigon, 1963.
For more than 40 years, McDermott’s deep understanding of human nature and wizardry in creating characters has been the seedbed of one bestselling, award-winning novel after another. Now she has outdone herself with an exquisitely conceived and executed novel that explores her signature topic, moral obligation, against the backdrop of the fraught time preceding the Vietnam War. It would be a shame to reveal the structure of the novel (don’t even read the jacket description!), but it opens with a scene packed like a perfect suitcase with every important theme, character, and concern. The narrator, Patricia, begins in an epistolary vein, describing the languorous morning of a woman whose primary role is “helpmeet” to her husband, a lawyer for the Navy: doing her nails, writing letters, bathing, finally putting on her panty girdle and dressing for lunch. These observations are addressed to a “you,” whom we then meet at the party (it’s like one of those brilliant rolling long shots in a movie): “She was about seven or eight, in her Sunday best like the rest of us...She held a Barbie doll in the crook of her arm, like a scepter.” This is Rainey; she has a baby brother whom Patricia accepts happily from their busy, bossy mother, Charlene (Patricia dearly hopes to be a mother herself soon) but who immediately vomits all over her. While the house girl, Lily, helps her clean her dress, Rainey shows her the gorgeous clothes Lily’s made for Barbie. Lily, a talented seamstress, whips out another outfit then and there, a “perfect little áo dài: the slim white pants, the long overdress.” As soon as she sees “Saigon Barbie,” Charlene is inspired to a charitable fundraising scheme, which she pretends Patricia came up with (poor Patricia, feeling crankier and more ill-used by the second), brusquely relieving Rainey of her doll to begin production without delay. “The tears that stood in your eyes, illuminating, or so it seemed, the blue of your irises, withdrew themselves—there was no other word for it. Not a one ever fell.” After you finish the book, you’ll want to reread this chapter. How the heck did she do it? All the complications of power, control, and self-control; who does and doesn't get what they want; the crimes committed in service of “helping” people—what a brilliant way to tell a story about Vietnam.
This transporting, piercing, profound novel is McDermott’s masterpiece.
