Events - Event View

The group will gather on Thursday, November 14 to discuss National Book Award winner Alice McDermott’s latest novel Absolution. The book takes the form of memories shared between two women some 60 years after they left Saigon, living on the margins of the Vietnam War. American women…and most especially wives…have typically been minor characters in the literature about that long-protracted engagement, 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, a mother of three, a beauty and a bully. Their relationship is not one of friendship but of domination.

The story is set in Saigon in 1963 where the two women form an unbalanced alliance as they strive to be helpmates to advance their husbands’ careers while also working to “do good” for the people of Vietnam. Charlene enlists the help of other military wives to do her bidding, ranging from taking toys and candy to children in hospitals to importing Barbie dolls, dressing them in Vietnamese clothing and giving them away. The reader gets a sense of their intended good will but the essential uselessness of their activities…and it seems to mirror the activities of their husbands in the Vietnam War.

The structure of the book is unusual in that it is comprised of three letters: two from the now widowed Tricia to Rainey, Charlene’s daughter, describing events that took place 60 years earlier, and a third from Rainey to Tricia. Katherine Dong will lead the evening’s discussion.

Members are encouraged to bring snacks and beverages to share (wine is welcome!). Please enter through the kitchen door at the back of the building as the front door will be locked. Hope to see you then!