After this: A Novel
ABOUT
THE BOOK
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.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
This is the story of a family, not a dysfunctional family, but one that must cope with generational conflicts and the sorrows of life. Alice McDermott is one of the very best contemporary prose writers.
McDermott’s writing is powerful in a collection of sketches focusing on the Keane family during the 1960s and 1970s.