That Night by Alice McDermott
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.23 You Save: $10.77 (77%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of That Night
Book Review: Forget the movie - read the book
Summary: 5 Stars
I've just re-read this book after almost 20 years and found it as fresh and original and as moving as the first time. McDermott's style is sparse yet rich - if that sounds like a contradiction, think of a short poem that evokes an entire world in a few lines. This book does the same, in prose that sometimes can be read like a poem, in less than 200 pages. It is carefully constructed, moving back and forth in time and among the characters, something other reviewers found confusing; I suggest they stick to what's on the bestseller rack at their local supermarket to avoid over-exercising their brains. I also find the suggestion annoying that the book is somehow not as good as the movie because it avoids all that Hollywood balderdash about love being so strong that a guy will do anything to get back together with the girl taken from him "to spend the rest of his life with her". Instead of this sort of "and they lived happily ever after" trash the book shows us - lets us experience - the much more moving, bitter reality of life, both in the masterful descriptions of the suburban families on and around "That Night" and in what becomes of the two protagonists in the years that follow. Highly recommended to anyone interested in great literature; NOT recommended to anyone who has seen the movie and now wants to relive it by reading the book or who wants to read "a nice romantic novel" - that's not what this is, as one disappointed reviewer noted. To him/her my advice would be, if you want to get drunk quickly, try bourbon instead of champagne.Book Review: So Good, I Read it Once a Year
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is fantastic; definitely McDermott's best. Readers who compare it with the movie aren't really being fair, because the movie changes the end of the story completely, though I have to admit that if I hadn't seen the movie, I would never have read the book.First of all, as an English major and fellow writer, I have to say that the writing here is fantastic! McDermott is poetic, eloquent, and has an uncanny knack for creating believable characters in a time and place that felt all too real. Although I was not alive during the 1960s, McDermott fully realizes not just the protagonists of That Night but all the less central characters as well. Many stories are told in this novel, and in the end the collective storytelling method comments not just on two ill-fated teenage lovers, but on a time, a place, and an entire era that has since passed.
My advice is this: read the book AND watch the movie. Both realize McDermott's vision in totally different ways, though the book feels more true-to-life concerning the nature of first love.
Book Review: McDermott makes magic of the moon!
Summary: 5 Stars
If there is a synonym for splendid, it is THAT NIGHT. Reading this superior novel is like taking a journey down the suburban sidewalks of youth, cracked and weathered, but familiar. It is a journey through the high school yearbooks of everyone you have ever loved, their photos smiling out at you in that moment right before the shutter clicks and adulthood begins. McDermotts story is one of first love, between teenagers, told with such an urgency that any "adult" love we may stumble upon later in life pales in comparison. The author writes with a keen eye for detail and a highly tuned ear for the sounds of growing up, and growing away from those we have loved. When this book breaks your heart, and it will, it does so without the sentimental trappings of so many love stories. If you don't love this book--I'll take it off your hands.Book Review: Wonderful!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of my all time favorites. I first read it when I was barely out of my teens and identified with Sheryl, the teenager who becomes pregnant and is sent away to live with relatives. Now, as a suburban mother, I identify with the mothers whose lives- dashed hopes and dreams - and those of their husbands and children are so vividly described in McDermott's uncanny way of creating a visual and lyrical snapshot of suburban life in the sixties.Alice McDermott really gets it right. Early love and the inevitable loss of it colors the way we think for the rest of our lives. The memories this novel brings back to me are so strong that this is one of the few books I re-read every few months.
Book Review: haunting, elegaic
Summary: 5 Stars
Well, this is a quite wonderful book that traces and retraces the events of one night in a suburban community. Small in scale, the book imbues the setting and characters with poetry, heroism, grace and tragedy. No detail is too minor; the creak of a jacket, the shape of a bruise, the way Sheryl's front teeth overlap "like dealt cards." On this night when a lost boy and a grieving girl are elevated to mythic proportions by her absence and his assault on her home, the fathers become giants and the mothers form a Greek chorus of wailing commentary. It's an accomplishment to transform the mundane into the passionate, and McDermott has accomplished it, here.