After the War [Hardcover]

Alice Adams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 3, 2000

Alice Adams is considered to be one of the major American writers of the last thirty years. Her stories appeared in The New Yorker from 1969 and 1995, as well as in twenty-two O. Henry Awards collections and several volumes of Best American Short Stories. After the War is her eleventh and final novel--the brilliant coda to a brilliant career.

After the War begins where her acclaimed novel A Southern Exposure ended: 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 in After the War.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the South, or at least in Pinehill, North Carolina, the setting of Alice Adams's After the War, "before the war" means before the Civil War. But in this sequel to A Southern Exposure (which introduced the displaced Yankee Baird family, their Pinehill neighbors, and their kaleidoscopic liaisons, and which ended as World War II began), after the war refers to a more modern era: after the bomb, after the various men have come home, when everyone supposes life will begin again as they once knew it. An autumnal, nostalgic quality pervades Adams's posthumously published 11th novel, partly because Cynthia Baird is a little older (her daughter has left for college and her husband is a naval officer in England where bombs drop and ladies with "rose petal skin" who are "good at riding and gardening, cooking roast beef and puddings" threaten danger of another sort) and partly because from our perspective at the beginning of the 21st century we well know that life never will be the same.

With her delicate, breathy, gossipy prose, Adams slips among her characters like a hostess at a party. Soon the bits and pieces, confidences and asides, fit together into a mosaic of personalities and events that illuminate the coming political and social upheavals of the late '40s. At Swarthmore, ardent, open-minded Abby Baird falls in love with a Jewish physics major with Communist parents. Melanctha Byrd, traumatized by her body image, drops out of Harvard where her brother discovers he's gay. Out in Texas the poet Russ Byrd, who's contemplating writing a play featuring the secret laboratory at Los Alamos, meets an untimely end in the company of a decommissioned black sergeant, raising suspicions of foul play. Meanwhile, back in Pinehill, "people were more aware of the state of Cynthia's lawn and her flowers, of their own lawns and flowers, than of the terrible but distant war." Cynthia cultivates her garden, spars with poor, silly Dolly Bigelow, and carries on a desultory love affair with a war correspondent, until he replaces her with someone else. Pinehill is, after all, a small and complicated Southern town.

With the precise ear and acute observation of a modern Jane Austen, Alice Adams weaves an artful portrait of a town and a time, bittersweet for one generation, perilous and full of potential for the next. Like its predecessor, After the War is a gentle, generous, and enlightening comedy of manners. --Victoria Jenkins

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (October 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375406832
• ISBN-13: 978-0375406836
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,424,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars After the War was a chore..., August 6, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: After the War (Hardcover)

I actually bought this book before I bought the more superior "A Southern Exposure". "After the War" is the sequel.

"After the War" was too pat. The precocious Abby got really boring. She hooked up with a man and was on the way to getting married and leading a predictable life. She would have her own career but so what? I think she would have been more interesting single and on her own for a couple of years, traveling the world and learning about life.

As in "Exposure", Cynthia Baird continued to be flighty and confused most of the time. Miraculously, she was accepted to law school. Maybe she was the precursor to Ally McBeal. I don't know. She has the nerve to complain about her husband's affair ad nauseum when she was busy having her own affair(s).

The gay rights movement has changed the way authors portray gay characters. Thirty years ago, the gay character would be a sad lonely man. In our thankfully more enlightened time, the gay character finds love, pretty quickly, but unfortunately this results in there being little conflict. Adams portrays the lesbian character in Superior Women quite differently - and more effectively.

In any case, sequels are rarely as good as the original, so read this but also peruse "A Southern Exposure."

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beautiful Finale, November 12, 2000

By 

Loree (Sunnyvale, ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: After the War (Hardcover)

After the War is a beautiful finale to the wonderful writing career of Alice Adams. In typical Alice Adams style, this novel follows the life of her main character, Cynthia Baird, and also weaves itself around the lives of other characters important to Cynthia. Utilizing the character "vignettes" that Adams so wonderfully writes, the novel takes the reader through the emotions of love, rejection, death and strengthening of personal character. Fans of Alice Adams MUST read this book!

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars maybe better kept unpublished, November 17, 2000

By 

Ellen M. Shapiro (Irvington, New York, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: After the War (Hardcover)

First of all, I have to say Alice Adams is (was, alas) one of my favorite writers. Of short stories. Not novels. I was thrilled to have won a short story competition to be in one of her workshops. To me, almost all of her stories are perfect. I can read them over and over. Her novels, however, are a different story. Rich Rewards has its rewards and there is something intriguing about Second Chances. But all the others left me disappointed. A disaster. Which is how I saw "After the War" from page one. Ridiculous characters. A mess. I would rather that my memories of Alice Adams did not include this awful work.