I requested Absolution because I thought I had read Alice McDermott’s past books. I actually don’t think I have, but now I really have to dig in. (Jennifer Egan says in her review that After This is her personal favorite.)

Absolution is a book in three parts and it is the most creative and robust storytelling that I have experienced in a long while. I loved this book for surprising me and emerging me in this world. Part I is narrated by Patricia, newly married to an engineer, Peter, who is stationed in Vietnam during the war. Charlene, a military wife who has been in Vietnam longer than Patricia, christens her “Tricia” and draws her into Charlene’s world of fundraising and “helping” the Vietnamese people. Part II is from the perspective of Rainey, one of Charlene’s daughters. Part III, I will leave to surprise you.

Strangely, I did not connect with these characters in a way that I normally do when I love a novel. But that was OK for me with Absolution because the story was so unique and the storytelling so well crafted. This is a difficult concept for me to explain, but the novel really drew me into a place and time.

Alice McDermott takes her usual Irish Catholic characters to 1963 Saigon. Two very different American wives, Tricia, a young, naive newlywed and a more outspoken older mother, Charlene, join forces to “do good”. The story is told in retrospect, as a much older Tricia corresponds with Charlene’s now adult daughter and tell of their lives in a turbulent place and time. Stunningly beautiful. McDermott is a treasure.

Wow, what a story. I thoroughly enjoyed Alice McDermott’s new book Absolution. Her vividly wrought characters came alive through trying to ‘do good’ for those less fortunate in the steamy unsettled country of Vietnam. Told from the perspective of conversations between shy Tricia, later in life, who was a young wife in Saigon in the early 60’s, and her pushy, aggressive accomplice Charlene’s daughter. The story toggles back and forth between the early 1960’s and current day, where it is easier to see the mistakes made in being involved in a war in that country and the costs to all. This is a engaging story with gorgeous writing and a plot that beautifully aligns with the definition of the title word, Absolution.

Alice McDermott – what a fine storyteller. "Absolution" is my first taste of her writing, and she's left me hungry for more.

A quiet read, the novel transports us to 1963 Saigon in the midst of the Vietnam War, where two young American wives form a tenuous friendship. I say 'tenuous' because Charlene is a force of nature, manipulative and more than willing to break rules to accomplish her goals, and when she meets quiet, passive Tricia, she steamrolls the other woman into helping her raise money for gifts to orphaned and unwell children.

The story of these two women is told 60 years later when Tricia connects with Charlene’s daughter, Rainey, and they relive their time in Saigon. And through their shared memories, a reckoning occurs – that of the impact Charlene had on both their lives in her quest to do her "inconsequential good."

We all know that women had little autonomy during this time in history. They didn’t have much of a say in the inner workings of their marriage and in their career (if they even did work outside the home), and McDermott does an excellent job of showing not only how little power these women had but also how so many of them carried a low-level anger and frustration because of it.

And this powerlessness is the reason Charlene is so determined to accomplish her altruism. It’s really all she CAN do while in Vietnam, and because she has such little power in other aspects of her life, she doesn’t hesitate to bend the system, and people, to her will, all in the name of doing good. But what’s unfortunate is that she doesn’t care if others are harmed in the process, her children included.

Tricia and Charlene’s story is riveting. And McDermott’s writing is lovely and brilliant in its introspection. She challenges us as readers to ponder the idea of whether any good is ever too small, to the point where it’s not even worth doing. And also, does the good work itself absolve a person of their immoral machinations?

The book does end abruptly, so be prepared for the story to just sort of stop. But I was okay with it, because McDermott only ever meant for us to have a slice of these women’s lives. A snapshot is all she gives us, and a snapshot must satisfy us.


My sincerest appreciation to Alice McDermott, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions included herein are my own.

A beautifully written book that is perfect for book clubs. So much to discuss. I will be recommending it to the book clubs that I work with.

The majority of this book is set in Vietnam in the early 60s before the war became big, about the American wives in the expat community. Most of the book is told from the perspective, as she looks back from the present day at her experiences as a naive newlywed in her early 20s, and how another more savvy wife named Charlene took her under her wing, with a small amount of the book about Charlene’s daughter in the present.

I read and loved several Alice McDermott novels back in the 1990s, but for whatever reason, I did not keep on top of her books after that. Well, that’s something I need to go back and remedy, because I forgot what an amazingly gifted writer she is. This book is quiet and slow, but so lyrical and so moving. And the sense of place and time - in a setting I’m not familiar with - was just incredible, I really felt like I was there with them. Fans of writers like Ann Patchett and Ann Napolitano should love this one too.

4.5 stars

Alice McDermott's novel about corporate wives in Saigon in 1963 is so layered and interesting. Many times, I wanted to go back and reread a chapter because I may have missed something. The characters of Tricia and Charlene and later Charlene's daughter, Rainey are rich and complex. A complicated, tragic era in American history told in a way I had not previously known about. A wonderful read and fantastic author.

Absolution gives readers a very different and intriguing view of the Vietnam War through the stories of two military wives living in Saigon in 1963.

Charlene is well-established in the wives' social group. She is dynamic, forceful, a do-gooder, and is used to calling the shots. Patricia, a newcomer to Saigon, is trying to find her way and very much wants to be a helpmate for her husband's career. She thinks that fitting in with the group of wives will help in that regard. She is also eager for friends in this new and very different place.

Charlene immediately latches on to Patricia (who is used to being called Patty, Patsy, or Pat), renaming her Tricia. Such is her power within her world.

The story is told via letters written between Tricia and Rainey, Charlene's daughter, in the current day. The reflections of each woman as she reassesses both her time in Vietnam and her relationship with Charlene were quite interesting and very well done.

I really enjoyed this unique view on the Vietnam war. Alice McDermott again proves her skill at depicting complex characters in complex situations and making the reader feel a part of it all.

My thanks to Farrar Straus & Giroux for permitting me to read a DRC via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and are freely given. Publication is 11/7/23.

The premise of this novel sounded right up my alley, but the writing style felt too stiff and disjointed for me.

Parties and receptions are where things get done in Saigon. So Tricia, a U.S. Navy intelligence lawyer’s wife, discovers when she meets beautiful and confident Charlene and her quiet eight-year-old daughter, Rainey, eager to show Tricia her new Barbie doll. A situation arises at the party, whereby Charlene suggests they sell Barbies dressed in the Vietnamese áo-dài garment, to American wives for profit. Recognizing an easy mark and deftly posing the idea as Tricia’s, Charlene pulls the unsuspecting young wife into her cabal of fundraising, charity work, and participation in black-market transactions.

Absolution is a letter filled with Tricia’s reminiscences of 1963 in Saigon, written in her old age. The reason is initially not clear, and this sense of foreshadowing runs through the novel. Tricia describes Charlene as bossy, self-assured, a schemer who pushes people around, her altruism tinged with an egomaniacal potency, even as she tenderly nurses a napalm-burned child, visits a leprosarium, or mothers Tricia through her worst moments.

McDermott juxtaposes the deferential Vietnamese women against the privileged American wives, helpmeets there to advance husbands’ “illustrious careers” in an era when men felt no obligation to share anything with their spouse. Nostalgia for “an antique past” when men held doors, gave up their seats, and stood when women entered the room permeates the narrative, whilst asking the reader to grasp how it was for the wives ‘back then’. The novel is vividly era-relevant―pale-blue elaborately-folded airmail letters, bouffant styles with jaunty flips, shirtwaisters, reinforced-toed-and-heeled stockings. Saigon’s frenzied pace and heat are visceral.

McDermott isn’t shy about the political and corporate machinations which took the U.S. to Vietnam, lest we should forget that the so-called altruistic intent became a killing ground for young American servicemen. An exceptional novel about nuanced relationships between women and the subtleties of power, illuminating an unusual understanding of Vietnam and its aftermath.

I was a child in the 1960’s so I remember well the Vietnam war, Jack Kennedy as our beloved Catholic president and the joy of owning my own treasured Barbie doll with her black and white striped bathing suit. All of these things are part of the book, Absolution, and Alice McDermott has totally captured the essence of that time.
This story starts off with the life of a young newlywed woman, Trisha, as she begins her married life living in Saigon where her husband’s job takes them. She develops a friendship with another more experienced, outgoing and definitely assertive young woman, Charlene whose husband is an officer stationed there. Tricia also forms a strong bond with Charlene’s young daughter who loves playing with Barbie.
The second Half of the book is a retrospective reflection from an elderly Trisha as she remembers her early married years. She also gets to reconnect with Charlene’s daughter, who has a different perspective of those years in Saigon as a child. Together they share their memories and reflect on the powerful influence Charleen had on both of them.
This was a lovely nostalgic story that dives into those very unsettling times of the Vietnam war. It is also a life reflection that I find myself doing more and more these days. I am not sure why the book is called Absolution. I do not feel any of the characters need to apologize for the lives they led. Perhaps it is asking for absolution for our country’s involvement in the war? I am not sure, but I personally found the book to be very moving as well as an interesting and thoughtful story.

Has all the elements of an Alice McDermott novel -- gentleness, understatement, gorgeous writing, the detailed and nuanced exploration of family relationships -- in the surprising, non-McDermott setting of JFK-era Saigon. I couldn't put it down.

Alice McDermott easily navigates the varieties of human behavior, each book shining a light on just a slice. In 'Absolution,' McDermott crafts a character-driven narrative that delves into the moral obligations and ethical dilemmas faced by individuals in the period leading up to the Vietnam War. Through Tricia's journey and those around her, the novel compellingly portrays the silent struggles of an era and underscores the power of forgiveness, both from a religious perspective and as a means of self-acceptance. Alice McDermott's 'Absolution' is a thought-provoking and beautifully written exploration of the intricate web of secrets, sacrifice, and redemption that defined an era and continues to resonate today.

Tricia and Charlene are two young wives living in Saigon with their consultant husbands at the beginning of the Vietnam war. The story is told by Tricia to Charlene’s daughter years later with small part of the book narrated by Rainey, the daughter in response. Tricia speaks of being a young, naive wife who is taught to be a “helpmate” but quickly becomes involved (railroaded) into Charlene’s charitable, although sometimes dubious endeavors. Concurrently, Tricia is suffering with infertility issues and struggling to learn her role.
I do enjoy literary fiction and found this book to be well written. I was unaware that there were American families living and working in Vietnam during this time and the author gave us a glimpse into their lifestyles. I enjoyed the way Tricia “found her way” with Charlene’s help and in spite of her husband’s dominance. I wasn’t sure about Charlene but couldn’t help to like and respect her as we learned more about her, especially through her daughter and her colleague, Dom. The friendship between Rainey and Dom many years later was a nice addition to the story. The book format was a little confusing for me with the unannounced switch to Rainey’s story then back to Tricia and I was uncertain who each narrator was addressing at first. And I really would have liked to know more about Charlene. But overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to readers of literary fiction.
#NetGalley #FarrarStrausandGiroux

In 1963 Saigon, before the full fledged American involvement in Vietnam, two wives of husbands working in Saigon meet and develop a friendship of sorts. Tricia, a young, socially awkward woman from Yonkers is married to an engineer working with the US Navy. Charlene, mother of three, is socially aware, and hellbent on relieving some of the misery she sees around her with charitable gifts of toys, food, and clothing. Tricia’s life’s sadness is that she desperately wants to have a child but experiences multiple miscarriages. She strikes up a relationship with Charlene’s daughter, Rainey, whose Barbie doll becomes the inspiration for one of Charlene’s schemes to raise money for her gifts. The story is told in retrospective, from two POVs, that of the elderly Tricia and the middle aged Rainey via correspondence between the two.

This is a beautifully written, observant story that is both compelling and disturbing. Here is the life of women in the early 1960s when a wife’s role was to be a “help meet” for her husband. I loved how Tricia’s memories point out some of the absurdities of a woman’s life in those days.

Here also are the provocative thoughts and actions of America’s presence and role in Vietnam in that era as well as the plight of the Vietnamese citizens destined to be house workers for the Americans and living in poverty under the threat and fear of attacks. Who can forget that devastating photo of the young girl burned by napalm? Tricia certainly can’t.

The characterizations are strong and there is an evocative sense of time and place. As a memoir, this postulates that there is “no such thing as a life without regret”; how do we find release or absolution from the consequences of those regrets?

The more I think about this book, the better I like it.

4.5 So well done!

We begin in the story following the life of newlywed Tricia as she follows her husband to Saigon in 1963. She falls into the expat society and is embraced by Charlene, a strong willed, outgoing, mother of three.

The story continues to return to Charlene as the second POV is her daughter, years in the future telling of her mother and her time in Saigon.

The characters in this book felt so palpable and real. Very well developed. Not a lot happened but enough to keep the plot moving, with telling of hardship and the inner thoughts of these women. Rarely do we understand what those around us are really thinking and this almost felt voyeuristic as we saw some really personal and hard things that Tricia dealt with.

An easy one for me to recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the complimentary e-copy of this book.

This novel focuses on two women and the time they spent in Saigon in 1963 at the dawn of the Vietnam War. The young, shy, and insecure Patricia is newly married to Peter, “a civilian advisor.” She desperately wants a family but in the meantime is focused on being a helpmeet for her husband. Charlene is her foil: a mother of three and a confident, take-charge dynamo, she manipulates Patricia into helping with her many charity projects which prove to be well-meaning but misguided.

Patricia is exactly the type of wife society expected at that time. She is loyal and dutiful, focused on catering to Peter’s needs. Though educated, she does little of consequence: writing letters, shopping, attending lectures and cocktail parties, taking afternoon naps, and making herself pretty for her husband. Certainly the verb obey was part of her marriage vows; Charlene points out that Patricia won’t go to church without her husband’s permission. She asks few questions and, in fact, doesn’t even know exactly what Peter’s job is.

What stands out about Patricia is her naivety and trust in her husband. She encounters a young girl in agony with burns, but only years later makes the connection between her odd burns and the use of napalm. There’s a very revealing comment she makes at one point, talking both about her Catholic faith and American support for a Catholic regime in Vietnam: “our sense that we were a part of the one true faith was pretty solid in those days. Or maybe I should say that mine was solid because I so trusted my husband to be right.” Of course, she is not the only naïve one: “Whatever mention these women made of the days they’d all spent as dependents in Vietnam was usually of the little did we know sort.”

Charlene, on the other hand, is the spunky rebel. Obviously intelligent and ambitious but with no career into which she could channel her energy, she devotes herself to helping the Vietnamese: she raises money to distribute gifts to hospitals and even visits a leper colony. Patricia thinks that the term “’white savior’” is an apt description of Charlene. She wants to do something “’to stand against that very little evil – that impulse to turn away.’” The problem is that Charlene’s altruistic ventures are not well thought out. She just plows ahead without giving consideration to what the people really need or want. Certainly, she never asks.

Her altruism is suspect. The reader will remember what Patricia is told by a friend’s aunt: “’self-sacrifice is never really selfless. It’s often quite selfish.’” So it’s logical to wonder whether Charlene is doing good deeds to really help people or to help herself. Is she trying to repair the world or mend herself? Certainly, her ego and status get a boost from her acts. Because of her position and lifestyle, certainly a contrast to that of the Vietnamese, does she feel an obligation to help or is she trying to assuage some sense of guilt? Her polar opposite is Dominic, especially when the reader learns about his son Jamie.

She has no difficulty using people for her schemes; for instance, she sees a maid’s skills as a seamstress and immediately coerces her into sewing áo dái, Vietnamese tunics, to dress Barbies. The maid, whose name is Ly but Charlene always calls Lily, is never asked what she thinks of this idea of Saigon Barbies or if she wants to help. And Charlene’s plan to encourage Americans to adopt Vietnamese children is as morally questionable as Canada’s Sixties Scoop involving Indigenous children.

Patricia does experience some personal growth. At the end of her sojourn in Saigon, she expresses anger at “everyone in my life who had considered my opinions inconsequential, who had lied to me or ignored me or manipulated me for what they considered my own benefit . . . those who’d set out to do good on my behalf.” Peter and Charlene both treat her this way so her anger is justified, but how much more so is that of the Vietnamese people, the recipients of Charlene and Patricia’s “efforts at inconsequential good”?

Of course, Charlene’s misguided altruism parallels the mistakes of American involvement in Vietnam. Convinced she knows what is good for the people, she just moves ahead without consultation, just as the American government, seeing Vietnam’s reunification as a strategic and economic disaster, justified its presence with anti-communism rhetoric and downplayed protests, like the self-immolation of Buddhist monks, against the increasingly unpopular Diệm regime. And until the end, Patricia accepts Charlene’s explanations, just as Americans accepted their government’s.

This is a complex novel which offers much for the reader to ponder: the conflict between societal expectations and personal desires, the meaning of genuine altruism, the unintended consequences of good intentions, and a country’s need for absolution for past actions. It would not suffer from a second reading. My only hesitation is that I found reading it a struggle at times; the pace is slow and parts are repetitious.

Review of Alice McDermott - Absolution
5/5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I am so excited to share this review today, as Absolution by Alice McDermott arrives on bookshelves. I have been fortunate to read several wonderful books so far this year, but I think this one will remain in my top 5 for 2023. From the first chapter to the last, I was enveloped by the sights and settings, the senses and emotions explored.

McDermott transported me back to 1963, and showed me what life was like for American expat women in Saigon then. Deftly portraying life as a trailing spouse, she gives a glimpse of an era of history not often seen from the female perspective, all the while begging her reader to question the true meaning of selflessness and humanitarianism at every level. I truly feel Absolution has left a note on my heart, and cannot wait for McDermott to craft her next novel.

I would like to thank NetGalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Absolution by Alice McDermott is my first novel by this author. McDermott has a gift for giving the reader a real sense of time and place as she describes her characters. This book set in Vietnam in the early 1960s really immerses the reader in the details of what it meant to be a woman at that time and especially what it meant to be a woman who was a helpmate for her spouse. The details ring true and were my favorite parts of the book.

I appreciated how the author danced from the current to the past without it being an intrusive technique, my only quibble was that the ending felt abrupt (so much so that I kept pushing to change my page on the Kindle).

Ultimately I enjoyed this book and appreciated the writing of the author. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of Absolution in exchange for an honest review. Absolution is available today.

4.5 rounded up.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This is an epistolary novel, with the letters exchanged years after the main action. They are between an older woman who befriended the mother of a younger. The younger woman initiated contact, asking questions about that time.

Whenever Alice McDermott releases a new book, it's cause for celebration. She has a superpower: inserting the reader into the story so deeply that the sights, sounds, smells, characters- everything- is real. This book is no exception. Early 60s Saigon, with the smell of leaded gasoline, the feeling of multiple layers of underwear and crinoline, the flavor of gelatin aspic meals. (Yuck)

The anxiety of the Cold War, the looming threat of conflict in Vietnam (though there are strong hints that it may not have been over communism, but in search of oil- surprise!!) The hope of Kennedy's Camelot. The desire of the main character and her newfound friend to do good for the poor in the leper colony outside the city. The moral gray areas of those running the leper colony.

Mostly, the underlying politics of colonialism was ever present, and mistrust between the colonizers and the colonized was persistent.

This is a book that requires attention, and thought. Thank you again, Ms. McDermott, for another book that satisfied.