New & Current Releases
Archives: A-Z By Title
Archives: A-Z By Author
Advanced Search

All-Time High Scores
Best Of 2006
Best Of 2005
Best Of 2004
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Books In Our Forums

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed books.

After This
by Alice McDermott


8.4

based on 17 reviews
read critic reviews
how did we calculate this?

based on 7 votes
read user comments
rate this book

Compare prices at pricegrabber.com

Buy it at powells.com

Buy it at amazon.com

Buy it at amazon.co.uk

Official Publisher Site

The acclaimed author's sixth novel follows the six members of the Irish-Catholic Keane family in Vietnam War-era New York.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 279 pages
09/05/2006
$24.00

ISBN: 0374168091

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Chicago Tribune Conan Putnam

It is hard to know how to start piling on the praise for this gripping, poignant book. It would seem there is no technique of fiction McDermott has not mastered. Like the masters, she makes it look effortless.

Library Journal Starr E. Smith

McDermott knows this domestic milieu intimately, and her sure authorial hand illuminates the inner lives of these ordinary people in a way that resonates beyond the mundane to the broad human condition. [1 Sept 2006, p.138]

Booklist Donna Seaman

Astutely attuned to the spiritual consequences of a rapidly metamorphosing world and the mysteries of desire, love, faith, family, and friendship, McDermott elucidates all that changes and all that endures with wondrous specificity and plentitude of heart. [1 July 2006, p.9]

Publishers Weekly

She flawlessly encapsulates an era in the private moments of one family's life. [19 June 2006, p.37]

Boston Globe Gail Caldwell

From its opening sentence -- a woman leaving a church in midtown Manhattan, in post- World War II America -- Alice McDermott's exquisite sixth novel unfolds in unhurried splendor, its pace so exacting you can feel the sting of sand in a high city wind.

Wall Street Journal Kate Flatley LaVoie

Ms. McDermott's deft touch makes us feel ourselves to be more than just fly-on-the-wall observers. We're a part of this family, sharing in the anxieties of Mary and John as their children grow into adulthood and as they themselves must try to grasp the new freedoms of their children's generation.

Washington Post Jane Hamilton

McDermott is at the height of her powers here, charging her seemingly ordinary scenes with the possibility of danger, of terror or mystery and, on occasion, radiance. She does so with the lightest touch, with the silkiest humor, and yet at the same time she probes deeply into the moment.

The Economist

After This is more than a book about an influential time in history and its effect on those living through it. In its portrayal of the emotions that hold people and families together—the loyalties and frustrations, the sorrows and joys—this quietly unusual novel is ultimately about what it is to be human.

Los Angeles Times Lisa Teasley

Because she is so wonderful at capturing the inner lives of her characters, the sudden switch to a minor player - such as the neighbor, schoolmate or priest - may be the book's only frustration. The story could have been as effectively told from the perspective of each family member, period.

Atlantic Monthly Joseph O'Neill

Her true subject is her inability, in good conscience, to fully credit the significance of the human travails she describes with such care.

LA Weekly Michelle Huneven

Quietly ambitious and lovely.

USA Today Jocelyn McClurg

While it fails as a cohesive novel, After This shines in its small moments, much like a story collection.

Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp

McDermott can pare her history more ruthlessly than Readers Digest, condensing a character's life into one paragraph before shunting him or her offstage.

The New York Times Michiko Kakutani

Her easy authority with this material, combined with her clear-eyed sympathy for her characters, results in a moving, old-fashioned story about longing and loss and sorrow.

Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese

She's a canny observer of domestic dynamics, but her niftiest creation in After This is Mary's crabby friend Pauline, a bitter, chilly, and perpetually undermining spinster lurking in the corner of every Keane family snapshot.

Kirkus Reviews

After This deftly explores the Agape love that parents show for their children, and the more mysterious love that siblings feel for one another, painting an unforgivably true and absolutely essential portrait of family life. [15 May 2006, p.S8]

The New York Times Book Review Paul Gray

Life does, irrefutably, go on. But if that's all there is to say about the matter, why bother with art and stories, which defy the limits of birth and death by trying to immortalize the interesting things that happen in between? For all its page-by-page brilliance, After This leaves that question hanging.

The average user rating for this book is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 7 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Glenn S gave it a9:
If you grew up white, suburban, middle class in the 60's you must read this book - it's like entering into a time machine! She really captures both the comic and the tragic with her understated style.

Ron gave it an8:
A lovely, quiet book about how people live . . . and die. How we both mourn and treasure the past. An American master--one of a handful.

Rachel K gave it a9:
The beauty of this book is its restraint from judgment. The gentle but indelible way McDermott draws these people and their world gave me enormous pleasure. Her work always does. When critics and readers have trouble with her form of realism, I think it's because they are looking at it as a representation rather than as, in itself, a work of art. Her work is comparable in my mind to that of Edward Hopper or even Garry Winogrand. I just read this back to back with Messud's The Emperor's Children, which I enjoyed just as much but for an entirely different set of reasons. (Messud is also a realist, but I would no more compare her work to painting or photography than to rock and roll.) Not that there's any similarity in subject matter, really, but both are basically contemporary, basicallly realist, and depend for their pleasure on the keenness of their observations, both psychological and physical. It was just an object lesson in the capacity and diversity of so-called "literary fiction."

sheila b gave it a7:
Really 7.5. Lovely novel, particularly meaningful for me because I totally recognize the era and NY (including the hurricane that hit NYC in the face when I was 8-ish) a little ways into the book. A nostalgic read for me and brought back many forgotten details but book is not drippy and sentimental. McDermott is not one of my regular reads but the good reviews drew me and the family's story was compelling from beginning to end, not an easy feat.

Discuss this book in our forums

Return to top of page

After This by Alice McDermott

After This
by Alice McDermott