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That Night

Name: That Night
Author: Alice McDermott
ISBN: 9780312681166

by Alice McDermott

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Overview

Suburban Long Island in the 60s is the setting for this story of the binding love between a young couple, and the drastic actions they must take when she becomes pregnant. From the author of The Bigamist's Daughter.

About the Author, Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott is the author of five previous novels, including Child of My Heart; Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award; and At Weddings and Wakes, all published by FSG and Picador. She lives with her family outside Washington, D.C.

Biography

Alice McDermott's latest novel, Charming Billy (1998), which won the National Book Award, tells the tragic story of the late Billy Lynch within the complex matrix of a tightly knit Irish American community. The New York Times Book Review praised the book as "eloquent" and "heartbreaking," and Kirkus Reviews called it "a softly resonant and nostalgic tale told masterfully."

Her first novel, A Bigamists' Daughter (1982), was published to wide acclaim. That Night (1987), her second novel, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In his cover review for The New York Times Book Review, David Leavitt called That Night "an original, a work that revels in a rich, discursive prose style that belongs entirely to Alice McDermott." A film version of That Night was produced by Warner Bros. and released in the spring of 1992. At Weddings and Wakes (1992), her third novel, became a New York Times bestseller. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times praised McDermott's "rich, supple prose" and Bruce Bawer called At Weddings and Wakes "a haunting and masterly work of literary art" in his review for The Wall Street Journal.

McDermott received her B.A. in 1975 from the State University of New York at Oswego, and her M.A. in 1978 from the University of New Hampshire. She has taught at the University of California at San Diego and American University, has been a writer-in-residence at Lynchburg and Hollins Colleges in Virginia, and was lecturer in English at the University of New Hampshire. Her short stories have appeared in Ms., Redbook, Mademoiselle, and Seventeen.

The recipient of a Whiting Writers Award, McDermott is currently writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with her husband, a neuroscientist, and three children.

Author biography courtesy of NYS Writers Institute.

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Editorials

From the Publisher

"At once mythic and personal—-a novel that possesses the ability to make us remember our own youth and all that has vanished since."—-Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "A strong, eloquent novel…McDermott writes clean, simple prose that serves her story beautifully. This novel is as carefully constructed as a poem, giving off a lustrous glow, and is poignant in the telling."—-People

"Voiced with musical economy…the author’s perceptions of suburban life have a rich detail of the quality of a Cheever or an Updike."—-Los Angeles Times

"McDermott is a spellbinder, adding a cachet of mystery and eloquence to common occurrences….She has taken a suburban teenage romance and pregnancy and infused it with the power, the ominousness, and the star-crossed romanticism of a contemporary Romeo and Juliet."—-Chicago Tribune

"To enter the world of this incantatory novel is to palpably recall almost against one’s will the rash, embattled strivings and disillusionments of first love."—-The Washington Post Book World

Chicago Tribune

Out of suburban violence and a sense of loss by separation, McDermott has wrought a miracle, one that is enhanced...in its telling.

Michiko Kakutani

A novel that is, at once, mystic and personal-a novel that possess' the ability to make us remember our own youth and all that has vanished since.
— Michiko Kakutani,The New York Times