Kirkus Says Your Book Club Should Read ABSOLUTION (1/10/24)

Kirkus Reviews has named ABSOLUTION by Alice McDermott a top 20 new book to read with your book club!

In the midst of the Vietnam War, two American wives, Charlene and Tricia, form an alliance during their time living in Saigon. Charlene is determined to relieve all of the suffering she sees around her and soon Tricia is helping her with this goal. Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter reaches out to Tricia and the two relive their shared experience in Saigon and are forced to come to terms with the ways their own lives have been shaped by Charlene’s pursuit of “inconsequential good.”

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“All the complications of power, control, and self-control; who does and doesn’t get what they want; the crimes committed in service of ‘helping’ people—what a brilliant way to tell a story about Vietnam. This transporting, piercing, profound novel is McDermott’s masterpiece.”–Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“McDermott is a resplendent writer of lacerating insights, gorgeous lyricism, and subtle yet exacting moral reckoning, here illuminating shades of good and evil within a bubble of Western privilege and prejudice in a country on the brink of war, concentrating the inane and cruel misogyny women faced in Barbie, that freshly energized icon of female paradox and power.”–Booklist, starred review

ABSOLUTION by Alice McDermott; 9780374610487; available now