Model Americans in Vietnam during the war.

We imagine them as Betty Draper, the embodiment of the perfect housewife. sixtystaged in the series mad Men (2007-2015). They are Americans and live in Saigon, then capital of South Vietnam, where the Washington administration sent their husbands. the plot ofAbsolutionThe ninth novel by American writer Alice McDermott, begins in 1963. Tricia discovers the stifling world of expatriates, made up of superficiality and boredom. There, despite the Vietnam War that was escalating not far away, garden parties organized by everyone were the essential part of a restricted social life. The moment the young woman sets foot in one of these houses, the abyss of frivolous idleness threatens to swallow her up. Until she meets Charlene.

This is everything she is not: daring, charismatic, shameless. “Charlene plotted, schemed and traded on the black market; she intimidated people, drove like crazy, fell more than she came in, swallowed pills, collected money. She was a real electric battery.”describes Tricia. Very quickly, the cheeky girl involves her in one of her charitable projects: selling Barbie clothes to American women made by a small local hand, for the benefit of those in need.

The two friends visit hospitals and distribute sweets to children tortured by unbearable burns. Those inflicted by napalm dropped on the country by the United States. Tricia suspects it, but refuses to see it. A Catholic, a teacher at a Harlem kindergarten before leaving for Vietnam, she is convinced that she is in the camp of the good guys. At this point in the story, the reader still gives her the benefit of the doubt. His commitment becomes more equivocal when Charlene invites him to adopt Vietnamese newborns in the United States, in exchange for a generous sum paid to their mothers. Do they really have any other choice? Can we guarantee a better future for a child by taking him away from his family, no matter how poor he is? Where is the line between good and evil?

Civilized Torments

The wives ignore him. They operate in the grey zone, but Alice McDermott never condemns them. She never makes a moral judgement on their actions. Rather, she concentrates on analysing their ambivalences, and this immersion in the polite torments of the two sidekicks is fascinating. Charlene and Tricia search for meaning amid the chaos, brave, pathetic, fighting in their own way against the specific mandates of their class. “You have no idea what it was like for us. Women, I mean. The wives.”Tricia justifies this from the first pages. “My true calling, at that time my aspiration, was to be my husband’s partner”she adds, imagining herself as his equal.

You have 38.59% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.