There’s so much I could say about this epistolary novel set in 1963 Saigon and confessing to the lives of two American wives in Ho Chí Minh’s Vietnam, but for now, I’ll say: Alice McDermott is (maybe) my favorite living novelist, and Absolution is (maybe) her best novel yet.
Absolution by Alice McDermott, (List Price: $28, Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 9780374610487, 2023-10-31)
Reviewed by Laura Cotten, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama