That Night [Hardcover]

Alice McDermott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1987

Two Long Island teenagers in the '60s are involved in an intense love affair when their romance culminates one hot summer night as a confrontation between their leather-jacketed friends and the neighborhood fathers escalates into a violent street fight.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 183 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T); 1st edition (April 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374273618
• ISBN-13: 978-0374273613
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #528,055 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful!, December 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: That Night (Paperback)

This is one of my all time favorites. I first read it when I was barely out of my teens and identified with Sheryl, the teenager who becomes pregnant and is sent away to live with relatives. Now, as a suburban mother, I identify with the mothers whose lives- dashed hopes and dreams - and those of their husbands and children are so vividly described in McDermott's uncanny way of creating a visual and lyrical snapshot of suburban life in the sixties.

Alice McDermott really gets it right. Early love and the inevitable loss of it colors the way we think for the rest of our lives. The memories this novel brings back to me are so strong that this is one of the few books I re-read every few months.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved This Book!, November 25, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: That Night (Paperback)

I loved this book! I graduated from high school in 1959 and this book took me back, no doubt about it. I knew a couple of girls who got pregnant while still in school, and it was as terrible as is depicted in this book. (Thank goodness for progress and change.....) This book has very strong, well-developed, definitive characters, especially the young narrator. I can still feel the book as if I lived in the neighborhood......

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous! I'd like to see this one back in print., July 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: That Night (Unbound)

Rick and Sheryl are high school sweethearts involved in an intense love affair. When Sheryl discovers that she's pregnant, her mother sends her away, not even giving Sheryl a chance to say goodbye to her beloved. When Rick comes to find -- he hopes to rescue -- Sheryl from her mother's home, a fight ensues. The narrator is Sheryl's neighbor, who was a little girl at the time of the fight, and who found Rick and Sheryl's relationship utterly romantic and fascinating at the time. Her memories of the fight, and of that summer, are long-lasting, and she describes those memories in that way that makes them seem to glow a little more softly as the time has passed. The book recaptures lost youth, and at the same time makes us realize that our youth is truly irretrievable. I love this book even more now than when I first read it in 1987! (FYI, the book is by Alice McDermott.)