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Summary
Summary
Alice Adams is considered to be one of the major American writers of the last thirty years. Her stories appeared inThe New Yorkerfrom 1969 and 1995, as well as in twenty-two O. Henry Awards collections and several volumes ofBest American Short Stories.After the Waris her eleventh and final novel--the brilliant coda to a brilliant career. After the Warbegins where her acclaimed novelA Southern Exposureended: in the small Southern town of Pinehill during World War II. With all the insight and grace that have marked her writing, she brings us close to Cynthia and Harry Baird, transplanted Yankees who moved south from Connecticut during the Depression to find a simpler world for themselves and their daughter, Abigail. But life in Pinehill has become more difficult since the beginning of the war: with Harry off in London to do his share, Cynthia finds her life complicated not only by her own loneliness but also by a growing awareness of local racism and anti-Semitism, and by the rising national dread of Communism. And as Abigail heads off to college, where she faces all the traditional complications of youth, we are drawn into an America caught between past and future, and two generations forced to determine what they cherish and what they must leave behind. Alice Adams's depiction of her native South--full, rich, affectionate, and always one of her many strengths--is at its most subtle and engrossing inAfter the War.
Author Notes
Alice Adams was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1926 and grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. After graduating from Radcliffe College, she married and had a son in 1951. Adams later recalled her late 20s and early 30s as the worst years of her life. After divorcing her husband in 1958, she worked at secretarial and clerical jobs to support herself and her son.
Adams published her first work of fiction when she was about thirty, and was more than forty-years-old by the time she began making a living solely as a writer. In 1982, in recognition of the twelfth consecutive appearance of her work in "Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards," Adams won a special award for continuing achievement. The only other previous winners were Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike. A New York Times best-selling author, many of Adams's books, among them A Southern Exposure and Almost Perfect, focus on love and on women struggling to find their place in the world. Other works of Adams include the novels Medicine Men, a story that explores the relationship between doctors and their patients, and Superior Women, a compelling tale of five women who come of age during World War II.
Now a San Francisco resident, Adams's work has been compared for Southern flavor to that of Flannery O'Connor and for sophistication to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Reading this posthumous novel is a bittersweet experience. On the one hand, it's wonderful to be back in the Southern town of Pinehill, and to enjoy Adams's inimitable prose and her calm intimacy with the characters introduced in A Southern Exposure. On the other, it's a pity to realize that we'll never know what future lives Adams had planned for these vibrant individuals. WWII is raging as the novel opens in 1944; Yankee transplant Cynthia Baird is now "an actively unfaithful naval wife." Her husband, Harry, is stationed in London, and famed war correspondent Derek McFall is filling his bedDuntil Derek's roving eye takes him to another boudoir. The Bairds' daughter, Abigail, is off to Swarthmore, and her friend Melanctha Byrd will go to Radcliffe. Famous romantic poet Russ Byrd, Melanctha's father and once Cynthia's lover, is now married to luscious Deirdre, who will soon be on the loose to search for another partner. Implacably dignified Odessa, the black housekeeper, is worried about her husband, Horace, on duty in the Pacific. The usual large cast is augmented by the introduction of a New York Jewish couple with Hollywood ties, active members of the Communist Party, and their college-age children. Everybody is still lusting, drinking, filled with inchoate longings and awash with memories of past liaisonsDbut some are becoming aware of new social stresses: changing race relations, a freer sexual climate, the threat of communism. Adams's deep acquaintance with her milieuDSouthern speech, cultural assumptions, casual bigotry and lush landscapeDshines clear in events, dialogue and descriptive passages of almost palpable sensation. Her acuity with period details allows a smooth reference to the atomic bomb and the musical Oklahoma in the same sentence. There are innumerable funny scenes, two deaths, several fraying marriages and a few young romances, one of which culminates in a wedding. Adams knew the hard truths of human life: that people (especially those in the sway of sexual passion) often behave badly, but generally have good intentions; that hardship often prompts compassion in the most unlikely hearts; and that our time on life's stage is brief. Unfortunately, hers was too brief by far. (Sept.) FYI: Adams died in 1997. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
In her elegiac final novel, the late Adams picks up the story of Cynthia and Harry Baird where she left off in A Southern Exposure (1995). Its now August 1944, and Cynthia is home in Pinehill, the southern college town to which the couple relocated during the Depression. Harry, a naval officer, is stationed in London; daughter Abigail is about to start at Swarthmore. The opening scene, a party for Abigail and her Radcliffe-bound friend Melanctha Byrd, sets the stage with Adams's customary deftness. Cynthia is having an affair with war correspondent Derek McFall, who is not in love with her, not at all. Her maid Odessa, a stately black woman whose husband is also in the Navy, likes Cynthia but has little use for her supposed best friend Dolly Bigelow, a near-caricature of the bigoted southern belle who later proves to be not quite as dumb or prejudiced as she seems. Melanctha's father, alcoholic poet James Russell Lowell Byrd, and his much younger second wife, Deirdre, are among the other locals in attendance as readers absorb the town's ingrown, gossipy nature. Up north, meanwhile, Abigail falls in love with James Marcus, son of New York Jewish communists satirized with wicked accuracy as straitjacketed by their world's conventions just as tightly Cynthia's southern neighbors. Despite a plethora of love affairs and two deaths, almost everyone is essentially marking time, aware that America will be dramatically different after the war. The story closes two years later with a wedding. Most of the characters (depicted with Adams's trademark sensitivity) have made meaningful changes in their lives; even Cynthia and Harry's complex marriage seems to be healing after a rocky reunion. As in most of Adams's fiction, the quiet narrative concerns itself less with political issues (though white racism is a constant subtext) than with personal struggles, which coalesce to create an overall atmosphere of a slightly anxious yet always eager embrace of life's possibilities. Tender, funny, and touching: a fitting close to an admirable career.
Booklist Review
Adams' last novel (she died in 1999), a sequel to her earlier Southern Exposure (1995), is set in the final months of World War II and the early cold war years. The location is Pinehill, North Carolina, and the large cast Adams introduced in the previous novel is retained here. She closely weaves more of these people's interrelated and complicated life stories into a copiously but relevantly detailed tapestry of small-town life during a time when the world beyond Pinehurst is changing at a rapid rate--changes that, particularly the social ones, certainly have their local effect. The central character is Cynthia Byrd, who, with her husband, Harry, moved to the South from the Northeast to be near famous poet Russell Byrd. Harry is now overseas involved in the war effort, and their daughter, Abigail, is ready to go off to college, leaving Cynthia too lonesome for her own good. Then Russell Byrd dies under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind a widow and daughter who is also going off to college. The man who was with Russell when he died is black, and racism rears its ugly head in Pinehurst. But the younger generation is looking beyond racism; as they go off to the big city, some are flirting with communism. The reader's primary concern (at least the one most at the forefront of Adams' intricate story) is whether Cynthia's marriage will survive when Harry comes home from the war. --Brad Hooper
Library Journal Review
In her final work, Adams reprises the lovable, imperfect, slightly dazed characters of A Southern Exposure, denizens of 1940s Pinehill, NC. As the Bairds continue to intrigue their neighbors with their Northern ways, Captain Harry returns from London to his "actively unfaithful Navy wife" and confesses his own overseas transgressions. Meanwhile, their sensible daughter Abigail balances med school with the wonders of sex with her Jewish boyfriend and her close friendship with Benny, a smart, handsome chum from Connecticut who just happens to be black. Teenaged Deirdre, impregnated by Russ Byrd, leaves the town to give birth and returns with her "brother" Graham. When Russ's wife, Sallyjane, dies, he marries Deirdre, acknowledges his paternity, impregnates Deirdre again, and names their baby...Sallyjane. And so it goes with Adams's large cast of characters. Racism, communism, homosexuality, infidelity, people living in sin, the end of the war, reconciliationDAdams is a genius at affectionately tweaking the stereotypes of a Southern gentility struggling mightily to understand the ways of the world. Readers will wish the characters well and look forward to moreDwhich, sadly, is not to be, as Adams died last year. Highly recommended.DBeth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.