Book: Absolution
Author: Alice McDermott
Edition: Hardcover, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Reading the novel Absolution by Alice McDermott, I felt a bit melancholy and wanted to talk with a friend about all that the novel shares. McDermott beautifully offers a story presented as a recollection. This narrative allows the perspective of time to be ever present. As a reader I struggled alongside Patricia and Rainey as they reflected on their younger selves and their actions in a turbulent time and place.
While the text itself is very straightforward and approachable, I often felt like I was teetering on an emotional cliff’s edge. The varied moral facets required me to really examine my own views and my own actions thinking about when there is nuance and when there is no moral ambiguity. This novel offers much for discussion.
As with all of my leader guides, this guide may contain spoilers. It is meant to be read as a resource for a discussion after finishing the book.
I try to find an author interview that goes into depth on some of the issues raised in the novel without recounting the novel in detail. I haven’t yet found that interview for Absolution. When I do I’ll include it here.
If being with someone grieving is new to you, you may want to read a Right as Rain blog by UW Medicine at the University of Washington, What to Say (and Not Say) to Someone Who Is Grieving.
Charlene’s work to bring light to individual lives in the midst of war, brought to mind for me the story of the beachcomber and the dying starfish. You can read The Star Thrower from The Unexpected Universe, by Loren Eiseley and see how this may fit in with your discussion of the novel. If you haven’t read the full original essay by Eisleley, I highly recommend it. It has much more depth than the shortened versions others have cribbed.
Pondering the trickiness of what is right and wrong and want to hear an ethicists take? Read some of the situations discussed by The Ethicist.
Patricia (Tricia, Patsy) Kelly— primary narrator, newlywed living in Vietnam with her husband in 1963, Catholic
Charlene— Navy wife, focused on charitable acts while in Vietnam with her husband, Protestant
Rainey— Charlene’s daughter, 7 or 8 in 1963
Ransom— Charlene’s son and Rainey’s twin
Roger— Charlene’s baby
Kent— Charlene’s husband
Arlene— Charlene’s sister
Peter Kelly— Tricia’s husband in navy intelligence
Ly (whom Charlene calls Lily)— Vietnamese woman who works for Marcia Case
Stella Carney— Tricia’s best friend from Marymount and activist
Helen, Marilee, Marcia— American wives in Vietnam with their husbands
Dr. Wally Welty— American lieutenant who visits the leprosarium
Dominic Carey— young American pediatrician serviceman who drives to leprosarium. Rainey’s neighbor at her country house later in life
Aunt Lorraine— Stella’s aunt in Charlottesville
Phan— widow, seamstress and friend of Lily’s
Jamie— Dominic’s son who has Down syndrome
Douglas— Rainey’s husband
Ellen— Dominic’s wife
June 1961 Patricia graduates from Marymount and heads to Birmingham, Alabama with Stella
September 1961 Patricia starts as a kindergarten teacher
June 1962 Peter and Patricia are married
February 1963 Peter and Patricia arrive in Vietnam
1963 Rainey is 7 or 8 years old
September 1963 bombing occurs in movie theater in Saigon
November 1, 1963 coup in Vietnam
November 2, 1963 Diem assasinated
November 7, 1963 Patricia and Peter return to DC
1975 mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam and the fall of Saigon
1975 Rainey in college
There are many directions your conversation of Absolution may travel. What follows are a few topics to get your conversation started as you explore connections we can each make to our own lives as we read.
Absolution offers a chance to explore a piece of history that we may know a lot or little about, what it may have been like to be a woman in that time and place, our memories and reflections of our younger selves and the fraught spectrum between right and wrong. Go where you are most drawn.
Winnowing in our lives
Patricia speaks directly about winnowing things saying,
“Why did I buy this in the first place? Who gave it tome, anyway? What am I keeping it for?” page 73
And yet, at its essence, the letter she is writing is a winnowing of her memories. Which memories will she set down on paper to be passed along to Rainey and how will her story be remembered?
Have you done a winnowing of things? Have you winnowed your story? Or set it down whether in writing or video or orally sharing it with others in your life? Which stories do you chose to set down? Which do you chose to let go of and let be forgotten?
What stories do you carry with you from others’ lives? From a parent, a grandparent, a childhood friend, a neighbor, a colleague? What is important about the stories you have held onto?
Memory
In an interview at Books Are Magic, McDermott says,
“It’s not just the memory. It’s not just the thing that happened. That was an interesting time to be in Saigon. But it’s how the memory changes and becomes a kind of storytelling when it’s seen through any number of years, a decade away, 10 decades away.
The stories that Patricia shares are through the lens of many decades.
How does time passing shape your memories? What about time passing affects the recollection of the memory?
How much is a memory influenced by perspective and wisdom and having learned more about life? How much is changed through a retelling? What memories do you have that have changed in perspective as you have grown and learned?
Cultural naïveté
Patricia writes about her cultural naïveté throughout. When she first arrives in Vietnam and has been out in the city for one tour,
“At the time, my political understanding was inchoate and Saigon was an adventure.” page 43
She is young, not even two years out of college, and she is thrust into a completely unknown environment amid a complex political and combative situation, with artillery thudding and tracing of fire they could see from the
“happy confines of our barbed-wired homes.” page 42
She brings her understanding of the world, having been raised in Yonkers, with Stella as her activist model, with her. She doesn’t speak French or Vietnamese. She is new to the military, new to Vietnam.
Later when Patricia visits the leprosarium and considers going down to the beach Dominic stops her and explains the dangers.
“I told Dom I suddenly felt like an idiot. Like I’d been picnicking in a minefield.” page 188
When have you been naïve to cultural differences between where you lived and another culture— whether a different neighborhood in the same region, or a city in a country half way around the world? What did you do to learn about the culture? What missteps did you make? Were you able to adjust as you went? What did it feel like to be unaware of the nuances?
Have you seen others in your cultural comfort who are not well-versed in your local customs and culture? How have you seen others adjust? How have you reached out to be there for them in their cultural learning?
Independent women
Charlene and her women friends in Saigon, are women of a certain era, in 1963, in a war zone. We see Charlene balancing a demur persona and her strong, capable nature. Right off the start Patricia says
“You have no idea what is was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.” page 3
Throughout history women have at times had to present themselves or conform to cultural norms and situations and at the same time, have stood up to make a difference, to speak up, to break down barriers.
Who are the women role models in the present or from history that stand out to you?
Women such as Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. She helped create a common computer language. There is an annual Grace Hopper Celebration where women and non-binary technologists gather.
Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson were three mathematicians who worked as computers (a job description) at NASA in the 1950s and 1960s. The book, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race, shares their story
Kathrine Switzer was the first female to run the Boston marathon even a marathon official tried to physically remove her.
Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
Margaret Thatcher served as Britain’s first female prime minister.
And there are oodles of woman whose stories haven’t been told who took the lead in a time or a place that presented significant barriers for them.
Where have you seen women who at times blend in with what is or was considered acceptable for women and at other times make their own mark and take down barriers for others?
Lessons in Chemistry is an outstanding novel for a discussion of pioneering women.
How well we know our parents younger selves
After Charlene dies, Rainey reaches out to Patricia to hear stories of her mother. Rainey also reflects upon her memory of the day Diem was overthrown, how she wasn’t afraid as they hid under the dining table with her father, a moment not unlike Charlene racing to the theater where there had been an explosion to look for her children.
We may have glimpses of our parents or caregivers from our childhood. So often our memories reflect emotions at the time or are transformed by the distance of time.
What do you know of who your parents were before you were born or when you were a child?
If you have children, what are the stories you have chosen to share with them and what have you held back? How well do you think they know your younger self?
Rainey, like so many of us, has a complicated relationship with her parents. That relationship continued to change even after death. She used the word ‘clotheshorse’ in her mother’s knowing it was a word her mother used as a reproach.
“It was a small betrayal, anyway. Petty. But one I wish now I had managed to resist.” page 274
How has your relationship evolved with your parents and with your children? What aspects of those relationship have changed simply through the passing of time?
Tikkun Olam and the Bodhisattva
Curiously I came across the phrase tikkun olam for the first time in (which I highly recommend), and here it is again in nearly the very next book I read, Absolution! The phrase jumped off the page as I read it.
In Absolution, the professor speaks to Stella as she’s on her way to Birmingham,
“And then the professor whispered, ‘Tikkun olam.’ He smiled at us all. An ancient midrash, he explained. ‘Your Mr. Tanner would know it,’ he told me. ‘It means ‘repair the world.’
He gazed at Stella across the candlelight, a favorite student. ‘The Jews know that everything God has created is in need of repair, flawed and imperfect… Easy enough to live with this when you’re old like us,’ he went on, ‘but when you’re young,’ and he paused to run his hand over his bald pate, his little apostolic flame of white baby hair. ‘When you’re young, it’s fuel to the fire of a sympathetic heart.’
He smiled at Stella again.
‘Tikkun olam, ‘ he said, ‘Go forth and do likewise.’” page 131
Throughout the novel, it is small actions that work to repair the world.
The bodhisattva represents a similar concept,
“an uncrossable river, an endless task, demons, yes, but also one benevolent being. Just one.” page 293
Where have you seen an expression of tikkun olam? How have you seen individual actions work towards repairing the world?
How do you see these two concepts intertwining? Which resonates with you? Both certainly can! We aren’t limited to one choice, one action, as the novel clearly shares.
Many of the following discussion ideas look at these concepts from different perspectives— the small acts that are making a difference. Not turning away from. Making a difference for one individual amid a landscape of horror. Being present for someone’s grief. Exploring these small acts and when you have witnessed a similar action, may help take your conversation deeper into tikkun olam or the work of the bodhisattva.
The impulse to turn away
When Charlene and Patricia meet with Marilee to ask if Marilee will display a Barbie where she works, Marilee criticizes the project of
‘bestowing gifts upon the hopeless only to inflate the ego of the one who does the bestowing.’ page 148
In response, Charlene tells Marilee about her visits to the leper colony. Saying that ‘you’ recoil upon seeing the terrible distortions to face and limbs and goes on to say,
“‘And that recoil, Marilee. That perfectly reasonable impulse to turn away, to gag, you might say, to close your eyes at the sight of this suffering is, to my mind, Marilee, a kind of evil… Turning away,’ a gentle indulgence now in her voice, ‘it’s an honest reaction, isn’t it?’ As ever, she did not pause for reply. ‘But it’s an indication nevertheless of what we’re capable of, it seems to me. We’re capable of turning away. We’re capable of despising the sight of something so awful, something so incongruous to the good order we prefer. The beauty we prefer. I mean, Marilee, ‘ she aded with a huff of breath, ‘suffering.’” page 150
What do you think? When have you turned away from individual awfulness or distress? What caused you to turn away? Your personal discomfort with what you were seeing? Your discomfort with the gap in privilege between your circ*mstances and what you were witnessing? Thinking this was kinder for the individual in distress? Something else?
When have you been turned away from? How did it feel?
When have you not turned away or not been turned away from? It might not be a moment like Charlene visiting a leprosarium. Perhaps it was a more commonplace interaction— seeing someone experiencing homelessness on the street, seeing an individual asking for money or work by holding up a cardboard sign. What transpired in that moment? How did it make you feel?
There is a 4-minute youtube video “Think they don’t notice?”, that talks about the importance of making eye contact with individuals experiencing homelessness as a way to acknowledge humanity. Making eye contact can be one small moment of tikkun olam.
Making a difference for one
Amid the chaos and devastation in Vietnam, Charlene and Patricia reach out to make a difference for one individual at a time.
Patricia holds a screaming child in an orphanage. Charlene holds a dying soldier. Small gifts are handed to individuals dealing with excruciating physical and mental pain.
These acts made me think of the story of the beachcomber and the dying starfish, an essay written by Loren Eiseley and first published in 1969. You can read The Star Thrower from The Unexpected Universe, by Loren Eiseley.
When have you seen someone make a difference for one in a world of chaos? What do you think? Does it matter? Is it worth the time and effort for an individual act?
When and where do you see people working for systemic change. When and where do you see people working on an individual level? Both can certainly exist— it doesn’t need to be an either/or. Where are you most comfortable in making a difference? Where are you most effective?
Being present with someone’s grief
Patricia is completely present holding a wailing child in the orphanage,
“In those few minutes she became— it must sound strange to say— wholly physical for me, a body, human, distinct, wheress, I think, until just a moment before she was in her misery a problem to be solved, a child in pain, yes, but also a wailing to be stilled, a sound to be soothed or smothered, something pathetic but wholly other. I had, in truth, dreaded approaching her.
But now, holding her in my arms for however long I stood there— not long— I understood that the sound of her cries was only a continuation, a reverberation, of her initial scream… I became, overwhelmingly, aware of this small body.” page 85
And during Patricia’s miscarriage, Charlene comes over. She sits beside Patricia on her bed and brushes her hair. After Patricia has miscarried, Charlene returns and is present with Patricia as she regards the embryo, Patricia’s cheek against Charlene’s bare arm.
When have you been completely present in someone’s grief? When has someone been present with you? How did each make you feel? What elements made the moment important? Words? Touch? Stillness? Tears? Something else entirely?
When have you felt abandoned in grief and when have you felt held? How can each of us create space to be present with grief, to hold the moment?
We often make room for someone’s joy, someone’s celebration. Many of us find it harder to be with someone in grief. If being with someone grieving is new to you, you may want to read a Right as Rain blog by UW Medicine at the University of Washington, What to Say (and Not Say) to Someone Who Is Grieving.
Good, bad, right, wrong, moral, immoral
Charlene says to Dr. Wally,
“‘You don’t just give up when the whirlwind throws its nonsense at you. You shout back. Even if it’s chaos for chaos.’” page 169
There are so many ways to think about the dimensions of doing the right thing and McDermott cuts to the very core of the confusion of what is more right, more moral or what is inappropriate or downright wrong. Just as the reader is thinking that a particular action is absurd, or improper, insensitive, a nuanced point of view is shared by another character to point out that nothing is clear cut in a place of pain, where making human connection is paramount, where individual acts perhaps can soothe some the suffering.
When Charlene and Patricia meet Marilee for lunch, the reader is presented Marilee’s perspective on how little good Charlene and Patricia can do through selling Barbies and delivering gifts.
“‘the children here— I have the deepest sympathy for them— but they aren’t going to have their lives improved by a toy or a lollipop. Let’s face it: their fates are sealed. Their fates were sealed the moment they were born in this godforsaken place.’” page 147
and goes on to conclude,
“‘There’s a real danger in bestowing gifts upon the hopeless only to inflate the ego of the one who does the bestowing… It encourages self-righteousness in the one even as it destroys self-determination in the other.’” page 148
When Charlene hatches a plan to pay Vietnamese mothers for their babies to be adopted by American couples, Patricia is shocked. Charlene believes the mothers would see this as an opportunity for their children to have better lives as any mother would want and Tricia sees it as selling babies. As the narrator, Patricia reflects,
“And even all these years later, I can’t say with any certainty what I hope for: that Charlene actually sold Phan’s newborn to those wealthy Americans, got the child to safety— even prosperity— so early in the war, or that Phan kept her baby with her through all that was to come.
Disorienting, this not even knowing what to hope for.” page 222
I too found this disorienting, even as a reader. I didn’t feel I had a strong right or wrong the way Charlene and Tricia each held opposing views in the moment.
Other quotes
As Stella and Patricia return from City Hall Park where they hoped to participate in a demonstration,
“Shouting above the traffic that roared through the stuck-open window, above Fifal’s farting engine, she quoted Stalin at me, ‘If one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that is a statistic.’” page 70
Aunt Lorraine decides that Patricia cannot go to Birmingham because it was too dangerous. Too dangerous for Tricia in particular because her father only had her, while Stella has an abundance of family.
“‘We are all obliged to one another, of course, but Patsy is obliged to a single person in a very specific way. No one can replace her. Not in the least. She is not free to put herself in danger.’” page 225
