When is helping others causing harm? And when harm is inflicted, even if the intention is benign, can individuals or nations admit their error? Alice McDermott’s beautiful new book Absolution explores the role of American women during the Vietnam War and America’s entanglement in that conflict. Elegant and insightful, McDermott explores the dynamic of paternalism as it relates to gender roles and countries.

Tricia Kelly, now in her 80s, is writing to her best friend’s daughter about their lives in Vietnam beginning in 1963. She states in the third sentence, “You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.”

Tricia describes cocktail parties, garden parties, and the elaborate machinations required of women to dress properly as “helpmates” to their husbands. Like the other American wives, Tricia had come to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) with her engineer and attorney husband Peter. More than likely, Peter worked for the CIA, though Tricia did not know for sure. Like most wives in their social circle in Vietnam, Tricia was a capable college graduate, yet subservient to her husband. The wives didn’t question their marriage roles or the reasons their husbands had brought them to Vietnam.

Tricia is rapidly befriended by a charismatic woman named Charlene. Charlene is as boisterous and bold as Tricia is quiet and shy. “Charlene had her fingers in everyone’s lives.” She, too, is treated as the charge of her husband, but she is determined to use her abilities to help Vietnamese in need. Charlene believes she is helping Tricia when she asks Tricia to join her in a charitable activity. Tricia didn’t seek Charlene’s help nor did Tricia wish to participate in Charlene’s philanthropy. And yet Tricia helps Charlene. This power dynamic in their friendship echoes the relationship between the United States and Vietnam.

Tricia acknowledges, in hindsight, the tragedy of America’s involvement in Vietnam and even feels a bit of humiliation for being a “helpmate” to a husband who contributed to the horrific violence that dominated Vietnam for years. Thanks to the passing of time and the writing of this letter, Tricia better understands what happened there and feels a kind of absolution by writing about that time.

Alice McDermott’s prose is steady and clear. She touches deftly on multiple themes, including history, hubris, religion, and righteousness. The Vietnam War is on the periphery of the story while the central theme is how the men in the 1960s infantilized their wives, and their wives acquiesced to this dynamic because the broader culture reinforced it. Absolution adds an important new dimension to the literature of the Vietnam War. 4/5

In August 2019, ten months after her mother died, the author Elizabeth McCracken returned to London, a city she and her mother had visited many times. While there, McCracken grieves her mother’s death and begins to write The Hero of this Book. Some readers debate whether the book is a memoir, not fiction. But that deliberation distracts. Though I wish the book had tried to dig deeper into her mother’s interior life, the book is a beautiful homage to the humorous, brilliant, gritty, stubborn force of nature that was McCracken’s mother. 

Born in 1935, McCracken’s mother embodied erudition. She quickly received her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees. After various compelling jobs, including directing plays in New York, she landed an academic position at Boston University, where she worked for 40 years. McCracken describes her mom, “My mother was less than 5 feet tall, walked with canes during my childhood, had tarnished black hair she wore in a bun, was talkative, had black eyebrows even when her hair had gone mostly white and was olive skinned. She was a Jewish girl of Eastern European descent born in a small town near Des Moines, Iowa, the older of twin girls.” 

Like a long eulogy, the author recounts anecdote after anecdote about her mother, hoping that the cumulation of these tender and humorous stories will reveal her mother’s essence. Her observations are reverent and irreverent, complementary and critical. McCracken believes that her mother’s determination to keep moving despite her limited mobility was central to her mother’s core. The canes and scooters were visible, but her mother did not share her feelings. Her mother quipped, “What good was understanding your own mind if you jammed it in the process?” However, because McCracken is a gifted writer, astute observer and devoted daughter, she describes and depicts her complicated and charismatic mother in detail.

The Hero of this Book is a poignant, provocative and humorous book. But mostly, it is a daughter’s loving tribute to her mother. 4/5