Absolution
Parties and receptions are where things get done in Saigon. So Tricia, a U.S. Navy intelligence lawyer’s wife, discovers when she meets beautiful and confident Charlene and her quiet eight-year-old daughter, Rainey, eager to show Tricia her new Barbie doll. A situation arises at the party, whereby Charlene suggests they sell Barbies dressed in the Vietnamese áo-dài garment, to American wives for profit. Recognizing an easy mark and deftly posing the idea as Tricia’s, Charlene pulls the unsuspecting young wife into her cabal of fundraising, charity work, and participation in black-market transactions.
Absolution is a letter filled with Tricia’s reminiscences of 1963 in Saigon, written in her old age. The reason is initially not clear, and this sense of foreshadowing runs through the novel. Tricia describes Charlene as bossy, self-assured, a schemer who pushes people around, her altruism tinged with an egomaniacal potency, even as she tenderly nurses a napalm-burned child, visits a leprosarium, or mothers Tricia through her worst moments.
McDermott juxtaposes the deferential Vietnamese women against the privileged American wives, helpmeets there to advance husbands’ “illustrious careers” in an era when men felt no obligation to share anything with their spouse. Nostalgia for “an antique past” when men held doors, gave up their seats, and stood when women entered the room permeates the narrative, whilst asking the reader to grasp how it was for the wives ‘back then’. The novel is vividly era-relevant―pale-blue elaborately-folded airmail letters, bouffant styles with jaunty flips, shirtwaisters, reinforced-toed-and-heeled stockings. Saigon’s frenzied pace and heat are visceral.
McDermott isn’t shy about the political and corporate machinations which took the U.S. to Vietnam, lest we should forget that the so-called altruistic intent became a killing ground for young American servicemen. An exceptional novel about nuanced relationships between women and the subtleties of power, illuminating an unusual understanding of Vietnam and its aftermath.
