That Night: Amazon.ca: Alice McDermott: Books

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Further developing the inventive narrative technique she used in A Bigamist's Daughter, McDermott masterfully blurs the lines between reality and illusion, offering a work on several levels. Her narrator reflects on an incident that shattered the serenity and naivete of her suburban world of the early 1960s, when she was 10 years old, and claims that event as a point of departure for her fertile imaginative powers. An opening scene of violence played out under a "bright navy sky" on a soft midsummer night "when Venus was bright," captures the tone and focus of the novel, which recalls the doomed love affair of teenagers Sheryl and Rick. McDermott makes the relationship between her two ordinary, unattractive protagonists poignant and believable. A mesmerizing storyteller, she evokes the aching vulnerability of adolescent love, in this case between two lost, despairing not-quite-adults. The forced parting of the two teenagers also marks a rite of passage for the other families in the middle-class Long Island neighborhood, as parents comprehend that even their fierce love for their children will not be enough protection against life's inevitable blows. In spare prose of remarkable acuity, McDermott captures a time and place and a social era. Her narrative voice, romantically elegiac and yet premonitory of doom, is strong and compelling.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"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

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Customer Reviews

13 Reviews

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Average Customer Review

3.5 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars That Night...a novel to remember, May 21 2004

By

Rachel (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: That Night (Paperback)

Have you ever felt that instantaneous smile that stretched upon your face, that unexplainable feeling deep inside yourself that makes you glow on the outside? Have you ever been in love with someone that everything else around you seems like a blur? Well, that is a description of the strong the bond of love is between the two main characters (Sheryl and Rick) are in the novel "That Night."
The story takes place in the summer of the early 1960's; in a typical long island suburb. On a street where every house was the same, where everybody in your neighborhood knew all there was to know about your family. The novel is narrated by a young girl who is Sheryl's neighbor.
Rick and Sheryl are two young teenagers who are deeply in love with each other even though Sheryl's family struggles with her decision of dating Rick. Sheryl escapes the reality of her father's death, and turns to Rick for comfort. "She had not been spoken to so directly, had not had anyone but Rick so directly meet her eye, since her father had died" (126.) After the horrifying news of her father's death Sheryl yet to finds out that she is pregnant with Rick's child. In the 1960's it was frowned upon if you were with child, but not married. As an embarrassment to her own town she is sent to Wayside, a school for troubled girls. "She took control of her daughter's tragedy in a way she had been unable to do with her own and turned the anger she had learned, the nastiness, to what would have seemed to her to be good use. For in these matters, it was well accepted at the time, the girl must disappear and the hoodlum boy never know" (53.)
This novel explores a troublesome time that Sheryl dealt with and then learned to overcome. "If you knew everybody you loved was just going to end up disappearing, you'd probably say "Why bother, right? You'd probably even stop liking people if you knew it wasn't going to make any difference, they're just going to eventually disappear" (71.) I enjoyed this book because it really made you look at life more seriously and made you stop and realize that you have to p ay for the actions to do in life.

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5.0 out of 5 stars So Good, I Read it Once a Year, Sep 19 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: That Night (Paperback)

This book is fantastic; definitely McDermott's best. Readers who compare it with the movie aren't really being fair, because the movie changes the end of the story completely, though I have to admit that if I hadn't seen the movie, I would never have read the book.
First of all, as an English major and fellow writer, I have to say that the writing here is fantastic! McDermott is poetic, eloquent, and has an uncanny knack for creating believable characters in a time and place that felt all too real. Although I was not alive during the 1960s, McDermott fully realizes not just the protagonists of That Night but all the less central characters as well. Many stories are told in this novel, and in the end the collective storytelling method comments not just on two ill-fated teenage lovers, but on a time, a place, and an entire era that has since passed.
My advice is this: read the book AND watch the movie. Both realize McDermott's vision in totally different ways, though the book feels more true-to-life concerning the nature of first love.

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1.0 out of 5 stars That night review, Jun 5 2003

By

"oololitaoo" (NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: That Night (Paperback)

The movie "That Night," was a wonderful love story between the town sweetheart and the rebel, taking place in the late 1960's. Sheryl and Rick were the ideal couple, except for the fact that Sheryl's family and town had a big problem with Rick. As told by the watching 10-year-old neighbor Alice, she follows the relationship as if it were her own. The book on the other hand should not even be touched. It had no connection to the movie's main theme of love.

In the movie, the more Sheryl and Rick's love grows, the more the townsmen start to hate Rick and his bad-influence friends. When Sheryl becomes pregnant and is forced to leave Long Island and move to Ohio, Rick is heartbroken. Alice then secretly helps Rick find Sheryl and rekindle the love they once had. The book "That Night," by Alice McDermott takes on a whole other scenario, which was not significant in the movie. This makes it confusing to the reader. "That Night," in the book refers to the night Rick and his friends came looking for Sheryl and got into a huge fight with the town husbands. "That Night" in the movie refers back to the night where Sheryl and Alice snuck out of their homes and met up with Rick. The book throws the reader off, with all the flashbacks and referring to the night of the fight. You can't feel the characters in the book, or even try and relate to them. You have the usual love story with twp kids in love and a town trying to break them apart. The author shows no connection to this problem, or what actions they took to try and fix it. Instead, the narrator, Alice, referred back to the fight way too many times, and after a while, you lose interest. In the movie however, you can distinctly identify the problem, and relate to it. Rick's love for Sheryl was undying, even when she did get pregnant and had to move away. You physically saw the tight bond between them and the measures he took to find and save her.

I definitely give this book two thumbs down. It was too confusing for the reader and you weren't able to personally connect to their relationship. I do not recommend it to anyone who liked the movie, or just wants to read a nice love story. I recommend the movie more than anything, which was great. It showed the unlimited measures one guy took to see his true love again and spend the rest of his life with her.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved This Book!
I loved this book! I graduated from high school in 1959 and this book took me back, no doubt about it. Read more

Published on Nov 26 2002

4.0 out of 5 stars INTERESTING
I did not find this to be the best of Alice McDermott's works, but I did enjoy it........Rick and Sheryl are high school sweet hearts. Read more

Published on July 12 2002 by LUV TO READ