BOOK SUMMARY
Alice McDermott’s powerful novel is a vivid portrait of an
American family in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Witty,
compassionate, and wry, it captures the social, political, and
spiritual upheavals of those decades through the experiences of a
middle-class couple, their four children, and the changing worlds in
which they live.
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.
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(589 words).
Library Journal
of 5
by judy
of 5
by jill carmel
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