That Night

Rating:
Summary: haunting, elegaic
Review: 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.