Absolution

Reviews / Votes

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 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, New York Times A firmly feminist accounting of the era's sins against women from both West and East, this could be McDermott's 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 *