ABSOLUTION by Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott’s novels are generally somewhat sedate, but this one takes place in Saigon during the early 1960s.  However, the young wives of American engineers and intelligence personnel are rarely in dangerous circumstances, especially if they stick to their villas, protected by walls and barbed wire.  Our first-person narrator, Patricia, soon comes under the influence of Charlene, a “dynamo” who is determined to spread a little cheer to the Vietnamese people, including a leper colony and the children’s ward of a hospital.  Whether the trinkets and Saigon Barbies she distributes are really worth the time and effort is questionable, and a gift she bestows at the end is beyond the pale.  Decades later back in the States, Charlene’s daughter and a kind young man named Dominic that Patricia knew in Saigon are neighbors in Maryland, and this coincidence seems unlikely and unnecessary.  His story is a compelling one, but I think it could have been conveyed via a different pathway.  Even more unlikely is the fact that my favorite line in the book is actually a quote from Stalin:  “If one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy.  If millions die, that is a statistic.”  What a sad but true statement, and it applies to more types of fatalities than just hunger.