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Outstanding
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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.
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Outstanding
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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]
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Outstanding
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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]
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
She flawlessly encapsulates an era in the private moments of one family's life. [19 June 2006, p.37]
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Outstanding
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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.
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Outstanding
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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.
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Outstanding
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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.
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Outstanding
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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.
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Favorable
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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.
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Favorable
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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.
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Favorable
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LA Weekly Michelle Huneven
Quietly ambitious and lovely.
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Favorable
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USA Today Jocelyn McClurg
While it fails as a cohesive novel, After This shines in its small moments, much like a story collection.
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Favorable
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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.
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Favorable
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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.
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Favorable
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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.
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Favorable
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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]
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Mixed
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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.
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