Absolution - Alice McDermott

 Absolution - Alice McDermott

She read

In 1963 Saigon, before the full fledged American involvement in Vietnam, two wives of husbands working in Saigon meet and develop a friendship of sorts.  Tricia, a young, socially awkward woman from Yonkers is married to an engineer working with the US Navy.  Charlene, mother of three, is socially aware, and hellbent on relieving some of the misery she sees around her with charitable gifts of toys, food, and clothing. Tricia’s life’s sadness is that she desperately wants to have a child but experiences multiple miscarriages.  She strikes up a relationship with Charlene’s daughter, Rainey, whose Barbie doll becomes the inspiration for one of Charlene’s schemes to raise money for her gifts. The story is told in retrospective, from two POVs, that of the elderly Tricia and the middle aged Rainey via correspondence between the two. 

This is a beautifully written, observant story that is both compelling and disturbing.  Here is the life of women in the early 1960s when a wife’s role was to be a “help meet”  for her husband.  I loved how Tricia’s memories point out some of the absurdities of a woman’s life in those days.

Here also are the provocative thoughts and actions of America’s presence and role in Vietnam in that era as well as the plight of the Vietnamese citizens destined to be house workers for the Americans and living in poverty under the threat and fear of attacks.  Who can forget that devastating photo of the young girl burned by napalm? Tricia certainly can’t. 

The characterizations are strong and there is an evocative sense of time and place. As a memoir, this postulates that there is “no such thing as a life without regret”; how do we find release or absolution from the consequences of those regrets?

The more I think about this book, the better I like it. 

Thanks to #netgalley and @fsgbooks for the ARC.

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