Absolution: Alice McDermott - Softcover

McDermott, Alice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1526673592 ISBN 13: 9781526673596

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023

Synopsis

* 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

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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, Charlene's 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 America's 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.

About this title

About the Author

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

From the Back Cover

'Absolution is one of the finest contemporary novels I've read. It is 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, this is 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, Charlene's 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 America's 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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1526673592
• ISBN 13: 9781526673596
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368