Synopses & Reviews
Alice McDermott's powerful novel is a vivid portrait of an American family in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Witty, compassionate, and wry, it captures the social, political, and spiritual upheavals of those decades through the experiences of a middle-class couple, their four children, and the changing worlds in which they live. While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternately intoxicating and bitter first fruits of the sexual revolution, their older, more tentative brother, Jacob, lags behind, until he finds himself on the way to Vietnam. Meanwhile, Clare, the youngest child of their aging parents, seeks to maintain an almost saintly innocence. After This, alive with the passions and tragedies of a determining era in our history, portrays the clash of traditional, faith-bound life and modern freedom, while also capturing, with McDermott's inimitable understanding and grace, the joy, sorrow, anger, and love that underpin, and undermine, what it is to be a family. Alice McDermott is the author of five previous novels, including Child of My Heart; Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award; and At Weddings and Wakes, all published by FSG. She lives with her family outside Washington, D.C. Pulitzer Prize FinalistA New York Times Notable Book of the Year Alice McDermott's new novel, After This, is a vivid portrait of the twentieth century and evokes the social, political, and spiritual upheavals of its time through the experiences of a working-class couple, John and Mary Keane, their four children, and the changes radiating through their Catholic community on Long Island. While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternatively intoxicating and bitter first fruits of the sexual revolution, their older, more tentative brother, Jacob, lags behind, until he finds himself on the way to Vietnam. Clare, the youngest child of their aging parents, seeks to maintain an impossible, almost saintly innocence. As John and Mary struggle to uphold the framework of their family, the four siblings are destined to experience, first-hand, the challenges and liberties born in the crucible of the 1960s. Alive with the passions and tragedies of a determining era in our history, After This portrays the clash of traditional, faith-bound life with modern freedom while also capturing the joy, sorrow, anger, and love that underpin and undermine, what it is to be a family. Pulitzer Prize Finalist Ms. McDermott gives us an affecting meditation on the consolations and discontents of family life--the centripetal and centrifugal forces that bind husbands and wives, parents and children together and fling them ineluctably apart . . . She] has returned to the territory she knows best: the family (specifically, the Irish middle-class family, around the 1960's). And her easy authority with this material, combined with her clear-eyed sympathy for her characters, results in a moving, old-fashioned story about longing and loss and sorrow.--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Ms. McDermott gives us an affecting meditation on the consolations and discontents of family life--the centripetal and centrifugal forces that bind husbands and wives, parents and children together and fling them ineluctably apart . . . She] has returned to the territory she knows best: the family (specifically, the Irish middle-class family, around the 1960's). And her easy authority with this material, combined with her clear-eyed sympathy for her characters, results in a moving, old-fashioned story about longing and loss and sorrow.--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times To recount the bare outline of a single scene between a couple named John and Mary, lower middle-class parents residing in the bland-lands of suburban Long Island, is to be reminded of what an extraordinary artist Alice McDermott is . . . In the way McDermott tells their story--in her surgeon's eye for detail, in her poet's virtuosity with language, in her unrelenting ability to penetrate surfaces and explore the rich and tragic nuances of the human predicament--the everyday is transubstantiated into art and the wash-and-wear facts of a Catholic family of six...riding out the boom and gloom of America's post-World War II suburban saga is made into the stuff of literature . . . I know of no more truthful writer than Alice McDermott . . . I can't but assess and admire her transcendent capacity to capture the shares presumptions and sharp-angled perspective . . . of the urban Irish-Catholic community . . . Alice McDermott is a powerful and graceful novelist. Her abilities as a stylist and storyteller put her in the first rank of American writers, and After This will only add to that reputation . . . Her greatest gift is to make her Catholic sensibility indistinguishable from the catholicity of her literary imagination, a clement, loving, and sweet (but never saccharine) embrace of all that is human.--Peter Quinn, Commonwealth
Insightful, moving, often poetic, and descriptive of something broader than it at first appears . . . It's a brief novel that fulfills its promise, to capture through one family the upheaval of an entire generation.--Jean Blish Siers, Charlotte Observer It is no secret that Alice McDermott, winner of the 1998 National Book Award for Charming Billy, is a writer of many talents, but to read her new novel, After This, is to be reminded how rare her gifts are . . . McDermott has always written relatively short novels. Again in After This there is no excess, no look-at-me pyrotechnics in her prose; with the mastery of a poet, she distills the life of the Keanes to its essence. Her method is familiar, going back and forth in time to reveal the story and the meaning bit by bit, as she peels back from the surface to the point of revelation . . . Several of McDermott's novels have a mythic quality, and this one achieves that mark most keenly . . . All her books are touched with the grace of her generous intelligence, her sly wit and her compassion for our longings, our griefs and the revelations that come only in the briefest of glimmers. The opportunities for revelation are greater because we have books such as this one, because of McDermott's quiet and sublime gift.--Jane Hamilton, The Washington Post Book World McDermott's preoccupations go much deeper than baby-boom artifacts, deeper even than mere history. What is it, she wonders, that holds together the loose fabric of our lives? . . . This is a daring book. McDermott lets the major events happen offstage . . . By the end of this strangely haunting novel, you're convinced that what she knows is something bigger than just New York and Long Island.--Richard Lacayo, Time After This demonstrates McDermott's technique at its most elliptical and effective.--Paul Gray, The New York Times Book Review It is hard to know how to start piling on the praise for this gripping, poignant book. It would seem there is no technique of fiction McDermott has not mastered. Like the masters, she makes it look effortless . . . The power of her language is as strong as ever . . . What a joy it is to experience subtlety, reticence and the intelligent unfolding of a real story before your eyes, as opposed to the in-your-face posturing of so many of McDermott's contemporaries, for whom style has dissipated into mannerism and strange, stereotypical character-building . . . Thank God for Alice McDermott's guts and imagination.--Conan Putnam, Chicago Tribune Alice McDermott's exquisite sixth novel unfolds in unhurried splendor, its pace so exacting you can feel the sting of sand in a high city wind . . . A character study of profound dimension . . . The only promise of grace that McDermott dares to make is the beauty found in rendering it.--Gail Caldwell, The Boston Globe Alice McDermott] sees patterns and themes that others overlook. She covers enormous ground yet never wastes a word, and brings to life a family representative of so many families in our not so distant past. It is the mark of a great novelist to make the particular universal.--Clare McHugh, The New York Sun Alice McDermott's fully imagined and beautifully written After This is more a collection of connected short stories or vignettes than a typical plotted novel . . . Each chapter is a gem in itself, with perfect details, dead-on dialogue and a slow, careful look into the hearts and minds of its characters.--Sarah Willis, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) Alice McDermott writes beautiful, understated sentences so subtle and yet so packed with insight that if you blink, you might miss, say, the death of a character, or the realization by another that her grown-up life 'would not be the life she had wanted' . . . McDermott's prose is stunning . . . Her] talent never fails to impress.--Jocelyn McClurg, USA Today Alice McDermott's sixth novel, After This, returns her readers to the familiar terrain of Irish American Long Island and, yet again, to the combination of qualities--compressed, poetic prose allied with an unblinking, William Trevor-ish sympathy for the muffled spiritual adventures of the most middling members of the middle classes--that have earned McDermott her high reputation (and prizes: she has a National Book Award and two Pulitzer nominations to her credit).--Atlantic Monthly There is the temptation, after reading Alice McDermott, to read nothing else for the longest time--to hold every exquisite word of her most exquisite novels in your head. There is the temptation to declare that she, along with Michael Ondaatje, is the best living writer of our age. That she exercises patience, compassion and wisdom where others emphasize strut, that she trusts herself with the power of scenes over the inflated intricacies of complicated plot. There is the temptation to use the word 'genius' in association with McDermott's name, and this morning, having just completed her sixth novel
Review
"Astutely attuned to the spiritual consequences of a rapidly metamorphosing world and the mysteries of desire, love, faith, family, and friendship, McDermott elucidates all that changes and all that endures with wondrous specificity and plentitude of heart." Donna Seaman, Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"It is hard to know how to start piling on the praise for this gripping, poignant book. It would seem there is no technique of fiction McDermott has not mastered." Chicago Tribune
Review
"From its opening sentence...Alice McDermott's exquisite sixth novel unfolds in unhurried splendor, its pace so exacting you can feel the sting of sand in a high city wind." Boston Globe
Review
"Another lovely needlepoint of a novel about middle-class Irish-American life....[McDermott is] a canny observer of domestic dynamics. (Grade: A-)" Entertainment Weekly
Review
"Alice McDermott's sixth novel...returns her readers to the familiar terrain of Irish American Long Island and, yet again, to the combination of qualities compressed, poetic prose allied with an unblinking, William Trevorish sympathy for the muffled spiritual adventures of the most middling members of the middle classes that have earned McDermott her high reputation (and prizes: she has a National Book Award and two Pulitzer nominations to her credit)." Joseph O'Neill, The Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic Monthly review)
Synopsis
Alice McDermott's powerful new novel wittily captures the social, political and spiritual upheavals of the mid-twentieth century through the story of a family, and the changing world in which they live.
While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternately intoxicating and bitter first fruits of the sexual revolution, their older, more tentative brother lags behind, until he finds himself on the way to Vietnam. Meanwhile, Clare, the youngest child of their aging parents, seeks to maintain an almost saintly innocence.
After This, alive with the passions and tragedies of a determining era in our history, portrays the clash of traditional, faith-bound life and modern freedom, while also capturing, with McDermott's inimitable understanding and grace, the joy, sorrow, anger, and love that underpin, and undermine, what it is to be a family
Synopsis
Witty, compassionate, and wry, this novel captures the social, political, and spiritual upheavals of the middle decades of the 20th century through the experiences of a middle-class couple, their four children, and the changing worlds in which they live.
Synopsis
Alice McDermott's powerful novel is a vivid portrait of an American family in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Witty, compassionate, and wry, it captures the social, political, and spiritual upheavals of those decades through the experiences of a middle-class couple, their four children, and the changing worlds in which they live. While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternately intoxicating and bitter first fruits of the sexual revolution, their older, more tentative brother, Jacob, lags behind, until he finds himself on the way to Vietnam. Meanwhile, Clare, the youngest child of their aging parents, seeks to maintain an almost saintly innocence. After This, alive with the passions and tragedies of a determining era in our history, portrays the clash of traditional, faith-bound life and modern freedom, while also capturing, with McDermott's inimitable understanding and grace, the joy, sorrow, anger, and love that underpin, and undermine, what it is to be a family. Alice McDermott is the author of five previous novels, including Child of My Heart; Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award; and At Weddings and Wakes, all published by FSG. She lives with her family outside Washington, D.C. Pulitzer Prize FinalistA New York Times Notable Book of the Year Alice McDermott's new novel, After This, is a vivid portrait of the twentieth century and evokes the social, political, and spiritual upheavals of its time through the experiences of a working-class couple, John and Mary Keane, their four children, and the changes radiating through their Catholic community on Long Island. While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternatively intoxicating and bitter first fruits of the sexual revolution, their older, more tentative brother, Jacob, lags behind, until he finds himself on the way to Vietnam. Clare, the youngest child of their aging parents, seeks to maintain an impossible, almost saintly innocence. As John and Mary struggle to uphold the framework of their family, the four siblings are destined to experience, first-hand, the challenges and liberties born in the crucible of the 1960s. Alive with the passions and tragedies of a determining era in our history, After This portrays the clash of traditional, faith-bound life with modern freedom while also capturing the joy, sorrow, anger, and love that underpin and undermine, what it is to be a family. Pulitzer Prize Finalist Ms. McDermott gives us an affecting meditation on the consolations and discontents of family life--the centripetal and centrifugal forces that bind husbands and wives, parents and children together and fling them ineluctably apart . . . She] has returned to the territory she knows best: the family (specifically, the Irish middle-class family, around the 1960's). And her easy authority with this material, combined with her clear-eyed sympathy for her characters, results in a moving, old-fashioned story about longing and loss and sorrow.--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Ms. McDermott gives us an affecting meditation on the consolations and discontents of family life--the centripetal and centrifugal forces that bind husbands and wives, parents and children together and fling them ineluctably apart . . . She] has returned to the territory she knows best: the family (specifically, the Irish middle-class family, around the 1960's). And her easy authority with this material, combined with her clear-eyed sympathy for her characters, results in a moving, old-fashioned story about longing and loss and sorrow.--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times To recount the bare outline of a single scene between a couple named John and Mary, lower middle-class parents residing in the bland-lands of suburban Long Island, is to be reminded of what an extraordinary artist Alice McDermott is . . . In the way McDermott tells their story--in her surgeon's eye for detail, in her poet's virtuosity with language, in her unrelenting ability to penetrate surfaces and explore the rich and tragic nuances of the human predicament--the everyday is transubstantiated into art and the wash-and-wear facts of a Catholic family of six...riding out the boom and gloom of America's post-World War II suburban saga is made into the stuff of literature . . . I know of no more truthful writer than Alice McDermott . . . I can't but assess and admire her transcendent capacity to capture the shares presumptions and sharp-angled perspective . . . of the urban Irish-Catholic community . . . Alice McDermott is a powerful and graceful novelist. Her abilities as a stylist and storyteller put her in the first rank of American writers, and After This will only add to that reputation . . . Her greatest gift is to make her Catholic sensibility indistinguishable from the catholicity of her literary imagination, a clement, loving, and sweet (but never saccharine) embrace of all that is human.--Peter Quinn, Commonwealth
Insightful, moving, often poetic, and descriptive of something broader than it at first appears . . . It's a brief novel that fulfills its promise, to capture through one family the upheaval of an entire generation.--Jean Blish Siers, Charlotte Observer It is no secret that Alice McDermott, winner of the 1998 National Book Award for Charming Billy, is a writer of many talents, but to read her new novel, After This, is to be reminded how rare her gifts are . . . McDermott has always written relatively short novels. Again in After This there is no excess, no look-at-me pyrotechnics in her prose; with the mastery of a poet, she distills the life of the Keanes to its essence. Her method is familiar, going back and forth in time to reveal the story and the meaning bit by bit, as she peels back from the surface to the point of revelation . . . Several of McDermott's novels have a mythic quality, and this one achieves that mark most keenly . . . All her books are touched with the grace of her generous
Synopsis
A vivid portrait of an American family in the middle decades of the twentieth century by bestselling author Alice McDermott
Synopsis
Alice McDermott's powerful new novel wittily captures the social, political and spiritual upheavals of the mid-twentieth century through the story of a family, and the changing world in which they live.
While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternately intoxicating and bitter first fruits of the sexual revolution, their older, more tentative brother lags behind, until he finds himself on the way to Vietnam. Meanwhile, Clare, the youngest child of their aging parents, seeks to maintain an almost saintly innocence.
After This, alive with the passions and tragedies of a determining era in our history, portrays the clash of traditional, faith-bound life and modern freedom, while also capturing, with McDermott's inimitable understanding and grace, the joy, sorrow, anger, and love that underpin, and undermine, what it is to be a family
About the Author
Alice McDermott is the author of five previous novels, including
Child of My Heart; Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award; and
At Weddings and Wakes, all published by FSG. She lives with her family outside Washington, D.C.
Reading Group Guide
Questions for Discussion 1. Alice McDermotts writing style has been widely praised for its evocative imagery and powerful use of understatement. How were you affected by the quiet lines that told you of Johns future death (pages 130-131) or of Jacobs fate in Vietnam (page 199)? What everyday images best capture the most emotional events of your life?
2. The initial scenes in After This tell us that Mary dated her brothers friend George before she married John, and that she had given in to Mike Sheas advances at a party. How did these facts shape your understanding of her as you read about her life? Before she was married, what did Mary seem to believe her destiny was?
3. Discuss the memory of the “baby grand.” How would you describe Mary and Johns life at that point, before the birth of their children? What was Mary discovering about her husband when they were newlyweds? How did the death of his brother shape John?
4. What was foreshadowed by the scene at Jones Beach, not only in terms of Vietnam, but in the temperaments of the children and the dynamics of the family as a whole?
5. What do Mary and John teach their children about the role of religion, from the time they are young (saying an “Angel of God” during the 1960 hurricane) to the novels closing scene? How does the childrens relationship to the church differ from their parents relationship to it? Did you adopt your parents views on religion?
6. Does the typical twenty-first-century American family resemble the Keanes? Has the very definition of family shifted? What would the future likely hold for Clare and Gregory?
7. Mary became an adult when images of the ideal woman were almost always domestic; she was even expected to cook dinner for her father and brother each night, regardless of her plans for the evening. Her daughters would have access to far more career options, as well as birth control and legal abortions. Was the generation gap of the 1960s more significant than for other generations of mothers and daughters? How did gender roles for men shift during this time period? Did Johns sons fulfill his expectations?
8. How does the novels setting affect the storyline? How was the turmoil depicted in After This playing out elsewhere in the country? What is distinctive about the locales so frequently featured in Alice McDermotts fiction?
9. Discuss the other outcomes described in the novel, such as Mr. Persichettis addicted son, or Paulines spinsterhood (is she a difficult person because she never married, or did she never marry because shes such a difficult person?). What determines which course a life will take?
10. Part III (page 79) begins with Johns thoughts: “Man is immortal, or he is not. And if he is, theres the whole question of whom you pray to. If hes not, then prayer is wishful thinking. You either pray to the dead or you dont.” What is the greater quandary he wrestles with in this passage? Do you think he ever resolves it?
11. How did war and politics shape family life in the 1960s and early 1970s? Has the impact of one on the other changed in contemporary America?
12. As Annie bluffs her way through the Edith Wharton dialogue and embarks on a relationship with an English lover, how does she seem to view her past? How is she defining herself in those scenes? What enabled her to have an identity that seems so different from her mothers?
13. The friendship between Pauline and Mary is often referred to as obligatory, a fulfillment of the commandment to “feed my lambs.” Is this friendship by contemporary standards? Is that sense of obligation waning, and if so, what are the consequences for communities in general? Does Mary seem to have any friendships like Annie and Susans?
14. How would you have responded to Sister Lucys story (page 214) if you had been one of her students?
15. What was your reaction to the novels closing conversation? What is the impact of the priests question about distinguishing God-given gifts from an accomplishment attained only through strenuous effort? How does that scene speak to the Keane familys destiny?
16. What comes to mind when you consider the novels title? What aftermaths resonated the most with your own life story?
17. In what ways does After This complement and amplify the themes of McDermotts previous fiction? What might the Keanes think of the other families she has created? Other Books By Alice McDermott Child of My Heart
Charming Billy
At Weddings and Wakes
That Night
A Bigamists Daughter Further Reading Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood; Baker Towers by Jennifer Haigh; When Madeline Was Young by Jane Hamilton; LAmerica by Martha McPhee; The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez.