'The triumph of After This is its evocation of childhood ... McDermott's unshowy, succinct sentences summon up the flavour of the past when it was new' THE TIMES
'Sublime ... McDermott's simple prose is full of poetic distillations that capture a mood or a moment just so, and it all comes together in a radiant portrait of family life' DAILY MAIL
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A mesmerising and masterful novel of life for one American family during the mid-twentieth century
Alice McDermott's masterful novel is a portrait of a working-class American family. While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternately intoxicating and bitter fruits of the sexual revolution, their older brother, Jacob, finds himself on the way to Vietnam. Clare, the youngest child, seeks to maintain an almost saintly innocence.
As their parents, John and Mary, struggle to uphold the family's framework, the four siblings are destined to experience the challenges and liberties of the 1960s. With McDermott's inimitable understanding and grace, After This captures the joy, sorrow, anger and love that underpin, and undermine, what it is to be a family.
