Absolution by Alice McDermott audiobook

Absolution: A Novel

By Alice McDermott
Read by Jesse Vilinsky and Rachel Kenney

Macmillan Audio 9780374610487

Unabridged

Format : CD (In Stock)
  • ISBN: 9781250911278

Runtime: 10.05 Hours
Category: Fiction/Literary
Audience: Adult
Language: English

Summary

Summary

Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award

A New York Times bestseller

A Time Magazine Best Books of the Year Pick

A Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year

An Esquire Magazine Best Books of the Year Selection

An Oprah Daily Pick of the Year

A Vogue Magazine Best Books of the Year Pick

A Good Housekeeping Best Book of 2023

An NPR Best Book of the Year for 2023

A Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year Pick

A Barnes & Noble Best Book of 2023

Among longlisted titles for Esquire Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2023

Among longlisted titles for Time Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2023

Among longlisted titles for Oprah.com Best Books of the Year, 2023

Among shortlisted titles for Mark Twain American Voice in Literature, 2024

Among longlisted titles for Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, 2023

Among shortlisted titles for PEN/Faulkner Award - Nominee, 2024

Among longlisted titles for Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, 2023

Among longlisted titles for Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year, 2023

Among longlisted titles for Vogue Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2023

Winner of Missouri Mark Twain Award, 2024

Among longlisted titles for Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year, 2023

Among longlisted titles for NPR Best Book of the Year, 2023

A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award.

You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.

American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own, inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.

Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking wry account of that pivotal year and of Charlene’s altruistic machinations, and discovering as they do how their own lives as women on the periphery—of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands’ convictions—have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.

A virtuosic new novel from Alice McDermott, one of our most observant, most affecting writers—about folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice, and, finally, the quest for absolution in a broken world.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews

“Damning and dazzling, this is the story of a Vietnam we never got in history class―a story of innocence lost, the bounds of womanhood tested, and our nation held to account.” Oprah Daily
“[With] deep understanding of human nature and wizardry in creating characters…this transporting, piercing, profound novel is McDermott’s masterpiece.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Alice McDermott has always been one of our greatest writers but here she exceeds every expectation. Absolution is one of the finest contemporary novels I’ve read. It is a moral masterpiece.” Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author
“Immerses the reader in the contradictions and moral ambiguities of the human heart…What a splendid, compelling book this is.” Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried

Reviews

Reviews

Author

Author Bio: Alice McDermott

Author Bio: Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott is the author of several novels, including Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller. That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, the New Yorker, Harper’s magazine, and elsewhere. For more than two decades she was the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the faculty at the Sewanee Writers Conference.

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Details

Details

Available Formats : CD
Category: Fiction/Literary
Runtime: 10.05
Audience: Adult
Language: English