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BookBrowse Reviews After This: Her sure authorial hand illuminates the inner lives of these ordinary people in a way that resonates beyond the mundane to the broad human condition. Novel

After This
A Novel
by Alice McDermott
Paperback, Sep 2007,
288 pages.
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It's a mistake to rush a McDermott novel, because in doing so you might miss the little details that make the whole worthwhile. In After This, she revisits the familiar ground of an Irish Catholic family living on Long Island, this time focusing on the Keane family from the mid 1940s up until the 1970s.  By setting her books in essentially the same location and around the same type of people time after time, McDermott is able to bring her magnifying glass to bear on the little details, subtly digging deep into the psyches of her characters - focusing on the fleeting thoughts and gestures, and the apparently trivial events, the sort that are rarely recorded in photo albums but are the bedrock of family life.

Although the Keane family consists of equal numbers of males and...
Beyond the Book
Alice McDermott was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1953.  Her first novel, A Bigamists' Daughter, was published to wide acclaim in 1982. That Night (1987) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. At Weddings and Wakes (1992) was a New York Times bestseller. Charming Billy (1998), won the National Book Award.  Child of My Heart followed in 2002.

She received her B.A. in 1975 from the State University of New York at Oswego, and her M.A. in 1978 from the University of New Hampshire. She...
This review was originally published in October 2006, and has been updated for the September 2007 paperback release. Click here to go to this issue.
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