"...in truth it seems to me that it's not the world that's small, only our time in it."
Absolution opens with a 1963 tea party during which a naive newlywed is about to meet the woman who will change her forever. Tricia, the novel's primary narrator, has just arrived in Vietnam along with her husband, an engineer who has been seconded to the Navy, and the gathering is her first chance to meet some of the other American wives in the city. Tricia vividly remembers meeting Charlene and her little girl - along with the girl's baby brother who threw up all over her - that day.
Now, some sixty years later, Tricia has reconnected with that little girl, and she is telling Rainey (and, at the same time, the reader) all about what her mother was really like in those days, exactly what Charlene was up to and how she managed to get away with it all for as long as she did. Wives in 1963 Saigon, it seems, were expected to represent their husbands' brands. That's why they were there in the first place, and that's all they were expected to worry about. Housekeepers and nannies assured that the women had more free time on their hands than they could possibly fill with tea parties, formal dinners, and book clubs - but because the number one rule they all lived by was "never, ever embarrass your husband," anything else they got up to was risky business.
Well, Charlene, was having none of that. And the innocently naive Tricia would prove to be the perfect "front man" for Charlene's schemes.
Almost before she knows what is happening, Tricia is visiting a children's hospital, is deeply involved in a complicated fundraiser to buy children's toys, and is even visiting a dangerously remote jungle leper colony. She is meeting people, Americans and Vietnamese alike, who need her help, and her eyes are opening to the real world her husband and his peers want to keep hidden from her. And Peter Kelly, Tricia's Irish-American husband, knows nothing about it.
Following Charlene's lead, Tricia is exposed to the real world and learns much about pain, suffering, courage, familial bonds, and what desperate people are capable of doing to and with each other. But most importantly, she learns who she is - and who she wants to be. Charlene may have only passed through Tricia's life for a few, brief months, but she changed it forever.
I always remember Alice McDermott's characters, and she has created some memorable ones here, but Absolution reminds me again of just how good a storyteller McDermott is. It's also a reminder of just how "small" our time in the world we live in really is. Think about it: 2024 is just as far from 1963 Saigon as 1963 is from 1900 America. So much has changed...but so much hasn't, and never will.
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| Alice McDermott publisher photo |
I've never read Alice McDermott. I have a copy of Charming Billy on my shelf. I feel it reproaches me.
ReplyDeleteCharming Billy is really good, Susan. Very character driven with members of an extended Irish-American family looking back on the life of someone close to many of them. Lots of flashbacks and slow reveals, etc. It was a prize winner for her. You'll feel guilty enough to read it one day... :-)
ReplyDeleteThis sounds fascinating with its focus on wives in Vietnam. I just finished reading Kristin Hannah's book The Women which is about combat nurses serving in the Vietnam War. I liked getting to see the war from that different POV.
ReplyDeleteIf you enjoyed that one, I think you'd probably like this one, too. Several of the main characters and a lot of the plot come from what happens in a couple of different hospitals.
ReplyDeleteI've always planned to read McDermot and don't really know why I haven't, but the influence of one woman's brief encounter makes me so curious. The time period and setting and the idea of living in a tiny American social community in a foreign country has all sorts of interesting possibilities.
ReplyDeleteI was drawn to the period in which this one was set - right on the cusp of all hell breaking loose in Vietnam. It was already unsafe for Americans in the country when these women were there but they and their husbands were still naive enough to think that nothing could happen to them. That no one would dare or that no one had the ability to do much to the U.S. even in that situation. Until they did. The women were all kept in the dark and were so naive for that reason, that it is all pretty tense at times. And best of all, it's well written.
DeleteI have a kindle edition of this (which I got at a good price). This takes me back to the early 1970s when I was married to my first husband and he was in pilot training in the Air Force. My memories of being an Air Force wife are not good at all; there was a dress code for going to the Officers Wives Club meetings, etc., etc. Plus I am interested in Vietnam at this time period. So much was happening at the time that I wasn't aware of.
ReplyDeleteWith that experience, I suspect you will easily empathize with what these wives are putting up with - and what kind of chaos one charismatic "rebel" can cause among the other wives. It really is an interesting time period, a moment in time that eventually changed how Americans think about their government. It's never been the same.
DeleteThis was my first McDermott novel which is hard to believe -- but it was a gem. So I will go back and read more. She is quite a writer. Parts of the book are a bit haunting .... looking back on one's past in Vietnam, and I still remember their trip to the leper colony and their ride back ... which could be a metaphor or a look into those she wants to help. Various facets to this story ... that make it more than it is.
ReplyDeleteMcDermott is really good. I think her characters are her real strong suit, but I find, too, that her plots stick with me for way longer than those of some other well known writers of a similar style. That trip from the leper colony really spooked me...it was all so vividly portrayed that I felt like I was sitting in the back of one of those trucks.
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