Absolution
A Novel
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Absolution
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Narrated by:
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Jesse Vilinsky
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Rachel Kenney
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Written by:
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Alice McDermott
About this listen
"A breath of fresh air."—BookPage
"Both narrators bring deep emotional tonality...this exceptional listen will foster deep book club discussions."—Booklist
"Alternately gripping, moving, and thought-provoking...this is an audiobook to savor."—AudioFile
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.
©2023 Alice McDermott (P)2023 Macmillan AudioWhat the critics say
2023 Vogue Magazine Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2023 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2023 Esquire Magazine Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2024 Missouri Mark Twain Award, Winner
2023 Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year, Long-listed
2023 NPR Best Book of the Year, Long-listed
2023 Time Magazine Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2024 PEN/Faulkner Award - Nominee, Short-listed
2024 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature, Short-listed
2023 Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2023 Oprah.com Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2023 Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
"Rachel Kenney and Jesse Vilinsky each deliver spellbinding interpretations of Alice McDermott's superb new novel.... Kenney performs the remarkable feat of personifying the young Tricia and her wry older self, fierce Charlene, and many local Vietnamese and GIs. Vilinsky, as Charlene's daughter, Rainey, creates an invaluable vocal throughline for the characters while crafting a believable adult child tussling with the legacy of a complicated parent. Alternately gripping, moving, and thought-provoking, this is an audiobook to savor." (AudioFile; winner of AudioFile Earphones Award)
"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."—Charley Burlock, Oprah Daily
"For more than 40 years, McDermott’s deep understanding of human nature and wizardry in creating characters has been the seedbed of one bestselling, award-winning novel after another. Now she has outdone herself with an exquisitely conceived and executed novel that explores her signature topic, moral obligation, against the backdrop of the fraught time preceding the Vietnam War . . . This transporting, piercing, profound novel is McDermott’s masterpiece."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)