After This

By: Alice McDermott

Narrated by: Martha Plimpton

Alice McDermott's powerful new novel wittily captures the social, political and spiritual upheavals of the mid-20th 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.

©2006 Alice McDermott; (P)2006 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC

Critic reviews

• Audie Award Finalist, Literary Fiction, 2007

"[McDermott] flawlessly encapsulates an era in the private moments of one family's life." (Publishers Weekly)
"Word by word, metaphor by metaphor, McDermott writes the most exquisitely perceptive and atmospheric fiction published today." (Booklist)

poignant and poetic

This is a beautifully written book, with a lot of depth. Themes such as war, religion and the role of chance connect the stories, which take place in the lives of one family over thirty years. However, I don't think that the narrator, Martha Plympton, does it justice. She merely reads it aloud without assuming the voices of any of the characters. Adult or child, male or female, drunk or sober, nun or college professor, they all sound the same. I'd recommend reading the book, rather than listening to it.

Yuk

Boring. Tedious. Disappointing from an acclaimed author. I did not finish it…maybe it got better?

beautifully written

This beautifully written book is not what I expected. It uses the devise of the short story, each story telling one episode in the life of one member of the family. The book is essentially a collection of short stories. Each story could stand on its own. I would have liked this book better if it were presented to be a group of short stories. I kept waiting for something to tie the stories together, but they never really are tied together. The only thing that kept me going to finish the book was the beauty of the writing. It is slow, not a lot happens, and, as another reviewer comments, most of the action happens 'off stage'. I rated this book for quality, not for content.

A Jewel of a Book

This book is probably not for everyone. Not a lot happens and a lot of the big things that do happen take place off stage. But I thought it was just wonderful. The author uses a series of scenes from the lives of each of the characters to give us a fully realized picture of one family's life. No melodrama-but I had tears in my eyes a the end.

Boring

I got about halfway through and gave up. Like other reviewers said, nothing happens and to me, the characters never really come alive. I realized I was bored and it was like listening to my mother on the phone tell me about people I don't know. Sorry...I tried to like it but finally decided I was wasting my time.