Absolution

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* THE TOP 10 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * 'One of the finest contemporary novels I've read ... A moral masterpiece' ANN PATCHETT 'Her writing has a luminous kind of clarity, a grace and scope that fills me with wonder' RACHEL JOYCE 'Damning and dazzling ... The story of a Vietnam we never got in history class' OPRAH DAILY ----------------- You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives. 1963. Saigon. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney working for US Navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. The two women form a wary alliance as they struggle to balance the pressure to be respectable wives for their ambitious husbands, with their own dubious impulses to do good for the people of Vietnam. Sixty years later, Charlenes daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam veteran, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, discovering how their lives as women on the periphery of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands convictions have been shaped and burdened by the unintended consequences of Americas tragic interference in Southeast Asia. Exploring the disaster of the Vietnam War through the lives built by American wives in 1960s Saigon, this is a virtuosic novel about folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice and the quest for absolution in a broken world.

Reviews

Evocative and masterly ... Absolution is a masterclass in point of view and thorny characterisation. McDermott captures the convolutions of social dynamics and the mutability of memory with brilliant aplomb and attention to detail. It is a successful and absorbing portrayal of the complicated interior lives of white American women during the Vietnam war, and the reverberation of their time abroad for many years after * Sharlene Teo, Guardian *
This absorbing, beautifully written novel stands out * Daily Mail *
Crystalline, searching ... McDermott spins gold from sensuous details ... Beautifully conceived and executed, Absolution stares down the assumptions and loyalties that cage us all * Washington Post *
Perfectly captures the manner and mood of that era and the constricted lives that women led * Independent *
Enveloping . . . Retrospect amplifies McDermotts narrative approach; her work lives in its shimmering details . . . The debacle of Americas involvement in Vietnam might easily have overdetermined McDermotts 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, New York Times
A firmly feminist accounting of the eras sins against women from both West and East, this could be McDermotts best novel yet * Los Angeles Times *
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 * Esquire *
Display[s] her talent for luminous moral complexity ...Exquisitely rendered * Mail on Sunday *
Damning and dazzling ... The story of a Vietnam we never got in history class * Oprah Daily *
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
Alice McDermott has always been one of our greatest writers but here she exceeds every expectation -- Ann Patchett
Her writing has a luminous kind of clarity, a grace and scope that fills me with wonder -- Rachel Joyce
Stunning * Good Housekeeping *
The moral quandaries at the heart of the book are skilfully excavated by an author attuned to the awful contradictions and compromises of the time ... Over the course of Absolution, McDermott turns this same lacerating intelligence on issues of class, money, race, marriage, infertility and above all, the questionable politics that led to the Vietnam War * Irish Times *

Author Bio

Alice McDermotts novels include Someone, The Ninth Hour, After This, Child of My Heart, Charming Billy, At Weddings and Wakes, That Night and A Bigamists Daughter. She won the National Book Award, has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist three times and nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. She lives with her family outside Washington DC.