After This

Starred review from June 19, 2006
A master at capturing Irish-Catholic American suburban life, particularly in That Night
(1987) and the National Book Award–winning Charming Billy
(1998), McDermott returns for this sixth novel with the Keane family of Long Island, who get swept up in the wake of the Vietnam War. When John and Mary Keane marry shortly after WWII, she's on the verge of spinsterhood, and he's a vet haunted by the death of a young private in his platoon. Jacob, their first-born, is given the dead soldier's name, an omen that will haunt the family when Jacob is killed in Vietnam (hauntingly underplayed by McDermott). In vignette-like chapters, some of which are stunning set pieces, McDermott probes the remaining family's inner lives. Catholic faith and Irish heritage anchor John and Mary's feelings, but their children experience their generation's doubt, rebellion and loss of innocence: next eldest Michael, who had always dominated Jacob, drowns his guilt and regret in sex and drugs; Anne quits college and moves to London with a lover; Clare, a high school senior, gets pregnant. The story of '60s and '70s suburbia has been told before, and McDermott has little to say about the Vietnam War itself. But she flawlessly encapsulates an era in the private moments of one family's life.

September 4, 2006
Plimpton's dark, rich voice and wry wit make her a fine choice for interpreting the stark realism of McDermott's latest character study. Set mostly in the 1960s and '70s in Catholic Long Island, the novel tests the troubled waters stirred by the sexual revolution and the Vietnam War. The challenge of this kind of narration is that McDermott's characters never speak the depths that are inside them. While they may be thinking about how desperately they love their children or how cruelly life can lash out at the innocent, what they speak are quotidian platitudes about the weather or the passage of time. Plimpton handles such reticence with aplomb, teasing out the underlying meanings of McDermott's carefully constructed tableaux. While Plimpton deals handily with the working-class Brooklyn and Long Island accents that comprise the bulk of the cast of characters, her renderings of the British elites that Annie encounters on her year abroad sound a bit stilted. She is much more at ease with the rough-and-tumble Midlands bloke Annie eventually hooks up with. Overall, this is a strong performance of a subtle and complex piece of writing. Simultaneous release with the FSG hardcover (Reviews, June 19).