Absolution of Alice McDermott, a Barbie doll in Saigon

It was a long time ago. However, Patricia, in a long letter addressed to Rainey, remembers those years well. In 1963, this young American followed her husband to Vietnam. Feverish, she is invited to her very first cocktail party, where Jackie Kennedy look-alikes, puffy blow-drys and pastel dresses, jostle around. Patricia meets the charismatic Charlene, who forces her to hold her baby. The baby vomits, ruins his pretty outfit. Welcome to the world of expats.

And here comes Alice McDermott again and her incredible talent: in a few pages, she sets the scene, in a few lines, she already says everything about her heroines. Patricia, renamed Tricia by Charlene, is a naive and conscientious young woman whose “the aspiration was to be a partner to (her) husband“. Charlene is a bulldozer who takes her new prey into her multiple charities. Aggressive and manipulative, capable of the worst and, suddenly, the best…