Alice McDermott's powerful new novel wittily captures the social, political and spiritual upheavals of the mid-twentieth century through the story of a family, and the changing world 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 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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"I was surprised to be captivated by this book. It was passed on to me with a "not my type of book" comment and sat on my shelf for over a year before I decided to give it a chance. I would describe it as a "quiet" book. It's not as if a lot doesn't happen during the course of these people's (primarily one family's)lives. The characters experience joy, death, war, birth, intimacy, isolation....but, as in our own lives, the lessons from those expereriences are not laid out in black and white. On the other hand, I found myself wanting to get back to the book and surprised to realize as I finished that the story ended just as the family's history was on the brink of moving into the next generation. The book is like life in many ways. A couple comes together, starts a family, watches the children grow and handles the ups and downs along the way, then the children move on with their own lives and another generation begins. Reading the book, it occurs to me now, was very much like looking through a famiy photo album."
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Cheryl (4 out of 5 stars)