Customer Reviews

That Night

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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......

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.)

If there is a synonym for splendid, it is THAT NIGHT. Reading this superior novel is like taking a journey down the suburban sidewalks of youth, cracked and weathered, but familiar. It is a journey through the high school yearbooks of everyone you have ever loved, their photos smiling out at you in that moment right before the shutter clicks and adulthood begins. McDermotts story is one of first love, between teenagers, told with such an urgency that any "adult" love we may stumble upon later in life pales in comparison. The author writes with a keen eye for detail and a highly tuned ear for the sounds of growing up, and growing away from those we have loved. When this book breaks your heart, and it will, it does so without the sentimental trappings of so many love stories. If you don't love this book--I'll take it off your hands.

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.

Several reviewers have expressed disappointment in That Night because it only vaguely resembles the film of the same title. Indeed, the novel and film are very different--the filmmakers seemed to have used the novel as a departing point, not an outline. But the book clearly deserves to be judged on its own merits; it is unfair, even irrelevant, to discuss the book in terms of its film counterpart.

That said, this is a beautifully wrought novel that explores a subject that has been mined endlessly by artists--the doomed teenaged romance. But the beauty and confidence of McDermott's prose (the opening paragraph is gorgeous and evocative, setting the tone for the rest of the novel) penetrates the seemingly mundane subject to reveal the intensity, the sadness and irrevocable loss, represented by Sheryl and Rick's relationship. The novel elaborates upon a specific moment, a memory, the kind of memory that grown adults attempt to 'shake off' and laugh at later in life, but which they carry in them anyhow.

That Night encompasses themes too complex, too full of beauty and sadness, that cannot easily be translated to the medium of film, but which are done justice to by McDermott's surefooted prose.

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.

Well, this is a quite wonderful book that traces and retraces the events of one night in a suburban community. Small in scale, the book imbues the setting and characters with poetry, heroism, grace and tragedy. No detail is too minor; the creak of a jacket, the shape of a bruise, the way Sheryl's front teeth overlap "like dealt cards." On this night when a lost boy and a grieving girl are elevated to mythic proportions by her absence and his assault on her home, the fathers become giants and the mothers form a Greek chorus of wailing commentary. It's an accomplishment to transform the mundane into the passionate, and McDermott has accomplished it, here.

Alice McDermott once again proves her best-selling author status in her novel THAT NIGHT. McDermott represents her original style of writing and her different point of view of important issues faced by the youth of today and yesterday. In this novel, she expands on a subject that is sometimes overlooked or shoved under the proverbial rug. This subject can be summarized in two words, teenage pregnancy. She uses her off-the-wall style of writing to enhance the importance of this subject and yet at the same time show the humorous side of it by portraying the story through the eyes of a child. Alice McDermott's purpose in writing the book That Night was to explore the other side of a teenage pregnancy, the side that deals with the emotions and feelings of the teens. She foreshadows the pregnancy by portraying the boyfriend as a hoodlum to begin with, so the pregnancy is believable and the relationship between the two teens is credible. Judging from the story, McDermott's values are somewhat flexible. She shows the relationship between the two kids as young and immature, yet she seems almost as if she condones the pregnancy. McDermott shows a moderately unbiased view towards the subject she writes about by continually shifting the focus to the young child through which the story is told. This act nonchalantly brings about the first person point of view from which she tells the story. McDermott's style is uniquely set apart from any other novel in its class. She jumps from present, into past, into present again, but she doesn't lose the attention of the reader somehow. Her tone is very laid back and conversational, yet she still shows her point of view in a very realistic manner. The story of two young teens in a passionate love affair really catches the attention of the reader. McDermott's use of symbolism in using two passionate teens to represent the hot summer nights is extraordinary. McDermott shows the irony of a little girl relating the story of a teen in the middle of a life decision that she, although much later, will have to face in her future. The diction used by McDermott proved also to be original. She depicts the little girl as being more mature than she really is by relating the deep and intelligent thoughts through the 8 year old. Her diction, although original, is somewhat unreal. McDermott fails to have the little child converse with anyone and also fails to give her a name. Granted, this fact may have some valid reasoning that is hidden among the suspense of the fighting and mystery. McDermott has the plot unravel in an odd sequence, which enhances the element of suspense in the novel. She uses intense imagery to display the raw emotion taking place in the novel. Descriptions of the fight are prevalent throughout the novel because the whole plot of the story is based around the one night when everyone's emotions went wild and the explanation of why this happened. I believe that Alice McDermott has her very own style of writing and she has a very effective style of writing. Although I may not always agree with the way she introduced an idea or event, I highly regard her opinion and accept that she has reasoning for writing the way she does and introducing things the way she does. Her literary tactics are completely her own and they do an excellent job of making the reader think and contemplate on a new level. Her use of retelling the story through the eyes of an unbiased child is genius. By relating her novel in this means also heightens the innocence factor of the novel. That Night by Alice McDermott confirms this author's ability to bring forth a novel of such character and originality that it can become a best seller. Her other novels also attest to her brilliant writing style, however odd it may seem. Making a best sellers list usually requires large amounts of experience, but Alice McDermott accomplished this status twice within only a few years of a published career.

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. Sheryl's father died suddenly, leaving an empty place in her heart. She fills that emptiness with Rick and when she tells her mother that she might be pregnant, her mother immediately sends her from their home in a Long Island suburb to an aunt's family in Ohio....Sheryl did not even have time to let Rick know and he is going crazy trying to find her until finally, one evening he and some pals armed with chains go to Sheryl's house causing a riot......The men of the neighborhood come to the aid of Sheryl's mother and the boys get arrested and everyone gets treated for minor injuries......In the meantime, Sheryl tried to reach Rick by phone, but never was able to talk to him.......Sheryl and Rick go on to live out their lives as their destiny dictates.......This story brings us back to our own teen years and first loves.