What do You think about That Night (1999)?
Found myself re-reading pages 35-55 and felt everything was too repeated, boring, and dazed. I did not enjoy this book at first. McDermott writes with really long sentences, using lots of commas and junctions from clause to clause. Then I decided to read this like a diary, and enjoy the long sentences. They're attempts to describe everything, from a person's perspective who sees almost everything there is to see. Views from one night in a small suburb, the events that led up to that night, and the course lives take way afterward. I discovered life-changing issues of pregnancy, parenting, neighborhoods, adolescence, sex, death, and growing up. I also found myself thinking about today's young adult lit, and how many of these issues are what are featured in young adult books, except it's not like this. There is too much delayed pain, too much learning about sex, too much struggling with parents, too much growing, and too much loss for That Night to be an actual young adult book. The themes are the same, but told from further away. I can't see young adults getting into this book, but maybe I'm wrong. Everything is seen much later than adolescence, yet captures so many teenager-specific moments. Sleeping overnight in a car, asking, "Can I go now?", and calling friends but speaking to parents. McDermott grasps for multiple ages to depict and succeeds. I loved the many stretches of boring suburban linkage, landscapes, and living - what connects much of this book together. And I always love distraught suburban details. Also the design of this book is superb, with THAT NIGHT spread across two pages on every folded out opening. McDermott's lengthy sentences look good in this thin-sized, full-timed volume.
—David Gallin-Parisi
Here and there something in this book resonated with me but only occasionally. Mostly, to me, this was a book of the bleak suburban life of American girls and women in the 1960s. I like to read about lives outside of my own experience (isn't that what many of us look for when we read?) but I just couldn't make myself care about any of the characters. Everything was grey and drab and was depressed by a sense of existential angst that their mundane lives could be jolted by the death of a loved one. I've been trying to place what exactly I don't like about this book and I think it's that in the world of the novel things are only ever terrible. There's no happiness and nothing is ever good. I don't mind a novel being depressing but for something like this I expect it to represent life a little more and even the worst lives have small glimmers of hope in them. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was cheerier than this. It's also worth pointing out that the men and the women in this book seemed like different species and for the men it usually felt like we were outside looking in as if they were aliens that happened to share a world with the narrator. Also, with the exception of two characters, nearly everyone (male or female) who has their appearance noted is said to be 'not good-looking.'
—Sahasrahla
While I may have given this three stars and not more, the way in which the book was written gave me pause and deserves kudos. McDermott focuses on the events surrounding one violent suburban night in which an entire neighborhood involves itself in the results of a teenage romance, the older generation meting out their own judgment upon the vainglorious and careless new while their children look on. Backstory and personal history are mere context to that one night, the actions of an hour, and those involved. The brawl serves as an excellent centerpiece- one night, one hour, a sort of study in suburban interruption which slowly reveals the depth of love and loss and absence held in each identical, stucco-and-siding house. The plot construction is, in this way, exquisite. The prose is very deliberate. McDermott's writing is usually graceful and sparse (see "Charming Billy", a pretty wonderful character study of a cheerfully miserable alcoholic) and "That Night" is no exception. The story reads at a nice pace, as well. Recommended as an interesting story in itself but also as a primer in building a narrative.
—Kayla Rae Whitaker
