Absolution

by Alice McDermott

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

    The setting is Saigon in 1963, towards the end of the beginning of America's escalation. The characters are mainly American officers' wives, mostly very innocent and well-meaning. Is philanthropy - the attempt at doing good really pure, or is it an act of contrition, aimed at resolving the conscience of the giver? Because the narrators are writing from a distance of many years, they can see the way officers' wives were treated as useless appendages - to be protected from the realities of their situation. This disregard has a great deal to do with the wives' attempts to help the Vietnamese citizens in whatever small ways they can.

    Alice McDermott is an amazing writer.

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