After This by Alice McDermott
	List Price:   $14.00 Unit Price:   $11.20 You Save:   $2.80 (20%) ISBN-10:   0385334699 ISBN-13:   9780385334693 Publisher:   Random House [MD]; The Dial Press Category:   Young Adults Pub. Date:   September 2007 Pages:   277 Format:   Paperback
Subjects
UNITED STATES_SOCIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMS_FICTION FICTION_FAMILY LIFE
Description/Notes
Praise for 'Child of My Heart: '[A] wondrous new novel . . . 'Child of My Heart extends [McDermott's] artistic triumphs, and we should rejoice.' --'Los Angeles Times Book Review 'Has something classic about it . . . [Its] craftsmanship and its moral intelligence are as one . . .Immaculate.' --'The New York Times Book Review' 'Richly textured, intricately woven . . . A work not only of, but about, the imagination.' --Margaret Atwood, 'The New York Review of Books Praise for 'Charming Billy: 'For all her intricate narrative design, it is the depth of feeling in Alice McDermott's fiction--the losses tallied and the steps not taken, as finely calibrated as summer rain--that has brought her such high regard. With her prismatic truths and narrative switchbacks, she captures a world so internal that her characters themselves would hardly be able to express it; it is instead the perfect gesture--the barely noticed frown, the hand silently extended--that delivers the entirety of that hidden realm . . . 'Charming Billy is a remarkable and beautifully told novel, with overlays of prose and insight that are simply luminescent.' --Gail Caldwell, 'The 'Boston' Sunday Globe Witty, compassionate, and wry, this novel captures the social, political, and spiritual upheavals of the middle decades of the 20th century through the experiences of a middle-class couple, their four children, and the changing worlds in which they live. ' Again and again, After This moves toward revelation and then modestly, modernly, pulls back, but not without a memory of what it glimpsed.' ' -- New Yorker '' Ms. McDermott gives us an affecting meditation on the consolations and discontents of family life.... And her easy authority with this material, combined with her clear-eyed sympathy for her characters, results in a moving, old-fashioned story about longing and loss and sorrow.' '-- The New York Times' ' It is hard to know how to start piling on praise for this gripping, poignant book... .Before we are aware of what McDermott has done, we are completely engaged... .Like magic, we are drawn in.' -- 'Chicago Tribune ' On a wild, windy April day in Manhattan, when Mary first meets John Keane, she cannot know what lies ahead of her. A marriage, a fleeting season of romance, and the birth of four children will bring John and Mary to rest in the safe embrace of a traditional Catholic life in the suburbs. But neither Mary nor John, distracted by memories and longings, can feel the wind that is buffeting their children, leading them in directions beyond their parents' control. Michael and his sister Annie are caught up in the sexual revolution. Jacob, brooding and frail, is drafted to Vietnam. And the youngest, Clare, commits a stunning transgression after a childhood spent pleasing her parents. As John and Mary struggle to hold on to their family and their faith, Alice McDermott weaves an elegant, unforgettable portrait of a world in flux-and of the secrets and sorrows, anger and love, that lie at the heart of every family.