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Summary and Reviews of After This by Alice McDermott

After This by Alice McDermott

After This

A Novel

by Alice McDermott
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  • Critics' Consensus (6):
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  • First Published:
  • Sep 5, 2006, 288 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Sep 2007, 288 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

A vivid portrait of an American family in the middle decades of the twentieth century.

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.

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Reviews

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It's a mistake to rush a McDermott novel because in doing so you might miss the little details that make the whole thing worthwhile - the fleeting thoughts and gestures that are her forte, and the the apparently trivial events - the sort that are rarely recorded in the photo album but are the bedrock of every family life...continued

Full Review (427 words)

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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

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Beyond the Book



Alice McDermott was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1953.  Her first novel, A Bigamists' Daughter, was published to wide acclaim in 1982. That Night (1987) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. At Weddings and Wakes (1992) was a New York Times bestseller. Charming Billy (1998), won the National Book Award.  Child of My Heart followed in 2002.

She received her B.A. in 1975 from the State University of New York at Oswego, and her M.A. in 1978 from the University of New Hampshire. She has taught ...

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