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    The After Party: A Novel
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    The After Party: A Novel
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    The After Party: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    The After Party: A Novel

    Written by Anton DiSclafani

    Narrated by Dorothy Dillingham Blue

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Joan Fortier is the epitome of Texas glamour and the center of the 1950s Houston social scene. Tall, blonde, beautiful, and strong, she dominates the room and the gossip columns. Every man wants her; every woman wants to be her. Devoted to Joan since childhood, Cece Buchanan is either her chaperone or her partner in crime, depending on whom you ask. But when Joan's radical behavior escalates the summer they are twenty-five, Cece considers it her responsibility to bring her back to the fold, ultimately forcing one provocative choice to appear the only one there is. 

    A thrilling glimpse into the sphere of the rich and beautiful at a memorable moment in history, The After Party unfurls a story of friendship as obsessive, euphoric, consuming, and complicated as any romance.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 17, 2016
    ISBN9780147524614
    Unavailable
    The After Party: A Novel
    Author

    Anton DiSclafani

    Anton DiSclafani is the New York Times best-selling author of two novels, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls and The After Party. Both were Amazon Books of the Month and Indie Next picks; her work is being translated into thirteen languages. She lives in Alabama with her husband and son and teaches creative writing at Auburn University.

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    Reviews for The After Party

    3.5/5

    76 ratings11 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Joy's review: Two girls with more money than sense become young women... they never do get much sense. Set in Rich Houston in the 50's and 60's, one is glamorous the other is the reliable friend. I never quite got why everyone admired the glamorous one or why old reliable followed her around like a puppy dog. Ms. Glamorous runs away to re-invent herself; Ms. Reliable settles down to be Mother and Wife. One of our book club members said this book could have been redeemed by an unhappy ending. I agree.
    • 4/5
      As sick and obsessive as the "friendship" between Joan and Cece (the main characters) is, I enjoyed reading about these tremendously flawed people. I thought Cece's husband Ray was extraordinarily forgiving - if I had been the author of this book, I would have written the ending quite differently. There would have been consequences for her ridiculous, offensive behavior!
    • 4/5
      An engrossing novel focused on a female friendship, as two Houston socialites try to know each other and secrets are slowly unraveled. This is escapist historical fiction, if not quite at its best, still pretty darn good. Surrounded by wealth, Joan Fortier and Cecilia Buchanan are lifelong friends, but their relationship comes under stress as Joan engages in the kind of behavior that doesn't end well in 1950s Houston. Intense, but fun, this is a good read for historical fiction fans.
    • 4/5
      We know at the beginning that the beautiful Houston socialite Joan Fortier is going to go missing again. It drives the story forward, this upcoming mystery. Telling us the story is Joan's best friend from infancy, also named Joan, but she's stripped of her name when the two start school and is now Cece. Cece goes back and forth between her childhood with Joan and 1957 when they are 25 and Cece is married with a young child. Cece almost comes across as a tad obsessed with Joan, but she also recognizes this and tries to reign it in. Joan is the type of person that can easily take over a person's life. Their friendship is even a point of contention with Cece's husband Ray. I'm talking about these characters like they're real. I could easily sit around gossiping about these wealthy, glamorous Houston women for hours. Anyway...Joan has gone missing before, when they were seniors in high school. The bulk of the book is Cece trying to explain their complicated relationship and her trying to unravel the complexities of Joan. I was completely wrapped up in their world and want to go to Houston just to drive around River Oaks. I'm a little sad the Shamrock isn't still around.Wonderful book.
    • 2/5
      I love the idea of taking a particular group of people at a particular moment in time and creating not just a story, but an almost hyperreal chronicle of a moment. This is one of the things I loved so much about Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan series. That said, this only works if the particular group of people are even slightly interesting and if we can glean larger truths about the ways in which people interact with one another and with the society in which they are placed. The After Party doesn't work. These people are dull and stunted, or not fleshed out enough to know if they are dull and stunted. Cece and Joan are awful. They are silly and absorbed in one another in a way most people get over in middle school. I think this is about creating new families, about growing up and parenting. Parenting seems to be the only way diSclafini thinks people do grow up. People are instantaneously credited with adulthood when they have children, and forgiven for childish behavior if they do not. (Her comments on parenting are true but laughably banal, but I think she was shooting for profound.) This isn't a bad book, and it's certainly not a good book, it's just an utterly useless one.
    • 2/5
      This was a solid 1.5 stars. Everything about it sounded like something I would love. I couldn't wait to immerse myself in old Houston high society, but everything fell flat. This was marketed as a period piece with an intriguing twist, but the intriguing twist wasn't intriguing at all. I could not wait to finish. The characters were totally unbelievable, unlikeable. The writing was average. What a disappointment.
    • 2/5
      An unpleasant book about a wildly out-of-whack "friendship" between two young women in the repressive debutante ball and country club world of 1950s Houston, Texas. Cece's obsession with Joan bordered on sickness. As well as the unsavoury dynamic between girlfriends, between mothers & daughters, and fathers & daughters, the plot moved as languidly as Houstonians in the heat. Perhaps that was the author's intention. I felt like I needed a recreational drink myself, much like the women in The After Party who spend most of their days and especially their nights smashed. Maybe that's how they coped with the boredom. I didn't like this book at all, and didn't finish it.
    • 5/5
      Joan and Cece are both wannabees. Cece longs for Joan's attention and admiration and when she doesn't get it, she is a lost soul. She jeopardizes her marriage to be Joan's groupie. Joan is running away from her guilt over giving away a precious gift. They are both sad creatures. This is the era of my Mother's youth. I see the same longings in her and her sisters. They were not wealthy like these two characters, but they chased after fashion, Hollywood stars and musicians, and a life that they did not, nor could ever, have. This is a very quick read and an intense portrayal of the boom times in Houston, the city that oil built. My thanks to the author and Penguin's First to Read program for a complimentary copy.
    • 2/5
      reviewed from e-galley. (character-driven; 1950s Texas socialites with a touch of "Hollywood" glam)
      I expected a bit more mystery, rather than a story that dwells mostly on the friendship between these two Joans. Their relationship is unusual, and has enough intriguing details (a possibly autistic toddler, a possible secret pregnancy, 1950s period elements) to keep me interested for a while but I tired of both characters by page 180. Not for me, but I think fans of DiSclafani's last book would probably enjoy this.
    • 3/5
      The first few pages of this book deliver a nice subtle menace and made me wonder what Cece did to Joan. That Cece did something to her was definitely implied - got her out of the way or something. Crippling? Poison? Something that would simultaneously bind Joan to her, make the need reciprocal and create some exclusivity of access. A mad-woman in the attic sort of vibe, but that didn’t go anywhere and it kind of bummed me out because I endured Cece and all her spineless, needy, drippiness and didn’t get any surprises.Also it was easy to spot Joan’s Hollywood jaunt for what it really was - a pregnancy. She’s only the millionth woman to have a baby out of wedlock or social sanction and we’re still horrified and hiding it? What? It’s such a universal trope that I was really bummed it was used here. Yes, there was a bit more pathos than usual because the kid was sick or damaged or whatever and died early, but he wasn't part of Joan’s life anyway so how devastating could it be? That little tragedy was only important for how it let Joan act; what it did to justify whatever awful thing she wanted to do next, especially to her mother. I did like the hyper-catty atmosphere that existed among the women. They call each other friends, but damn they are so competitive and stupid that it brings out viciousness and manipulation. The scene between Cece and Ciela on page 188 is so repellent that it was great. And just a word about Ciela’s whole name change thing; going from Graciela to just the last bit is wonderfully absurd and sad. She wants to be exceptional and special, but can’t because she’s stupid and bred to only want what the other women have so instead has to try to forge some distinction by butchering her name. They’re all horrible clones of each other, the next one more phony and plastic than the last. If they could have their nannies do the giving birth part, they would. I digress. There is a great encapsulation on page 189 - “Sometimes it was exhausting remembering the ways we measured each other.” Joan is merely the worst of the bunch. She’s molded and brainwashed into being incurious and unimaginative which makes her bored and self-destructive. The dynamic between her and Cece is pretty sick and I was surprised that Joan tried to break it more than once. It’s not clear why, but it might be that Joan knew she was going to engineer her disappearance and wanted Cece to be free of her before that, but I’m just guessing. There isn’t anything that clear-cut in the book in terms of motives or intentions. I did feel really sorry for Ray. Meeting Cece when Joan was absent didn’t prepare him for the total domination she had over Cece’s life. The battle for her attention and devotion was hard to watch and I like the character it gave Ray. Overall I wish this had been a bit more concrete and deliberate a story. It was all a bit too implied to be satisfying. The commentary on the emptiness of mid-century suburban life is shown decently, but has been done better by others.
    • 3/5
      FICTIONAnton DiSclafaniThe After PartyRiverhead BooksHardcover, 978-1-5946-3316-4 (also available as an ebook, an audio book, and on Audible), 384 pgs., $26.00May 17, 2016 Joan “the jewel” Fortier, “Houston’s most famous socialite,” is twenty-five years old in 1957. She’s always chafed against restrictions imposed by her inherited position in society, but her behavior is increasingly erratic. Cece Buchanan, Joan’s best friend since before they can remember, believes it her “job to protect her [Joan] from herself,” to persuade Joan to behave, to “fall-in.” But Joan will not be tamed: keeping secrets, keeping company with strange men, disappearing from her family and friends; when she’s present, her state is clearly chemically altered. Cece is hurt by Joan’s withdrawal and obsessed with whatever Joan is up to. When this fixation begins to threaten Cece’s marriage, she must choose. Cece, who observes that “most unhappy people … wanted contradictory things,” is torn between the comfortable, known world of her husband and son, and “the great big world of the night” that Joan represents. The After Party, Anton DiSclafani’s second novel, set in the Houston neighborhood of River Oaks (where the houses have names and there’s enough alcohol to fill the swimming pools), follows the fateful events of a single summer in the lives of a clique of debutantes and illustrates the consequences of violating the stultifying conventions of a rigid society. Making liberal use of flashbacks, the story is told in first person by Cece (the “yawn”), revealing the history of a friendship. Cece has been spared obscurity amid the brighter lights of these debutantes by her association with Joan, the sun to Cece’s moon. The After Party’s narrative is brisk and compelling, but the plot is time-worn. While the novel makes for a pleasant diversion, DiSclafani’s writing is not particularly powerful. However, her ability to invoke a historical atmosphere and era is effective. The foreshadowing can be heavy-handed, but it does keep the pages turning. The constant talk of money, clothes, and position eventually becomes tiresome. But ultimately none of these things are the point. The centerpiece of The After Party is the complicated friendship between Cece and Joan, two complex and vividly drawn characters. DiSclafani’s cast are not particularly sympathetic, but they’re intriguing in a bug-under-glass manner. The dichotomy is that, while these characters seem to be strikingly shallow at first glance, it’s not the individual characters that are shallow, but rather that the society they live in imposes it on them as a condition of acceptance. “I wished [Joan] could see how mentioning the articles she read,” Cece thinks, “the places she wanted to go—all the ways in which we were not enough—won her no favors among us.” Cece opens a voyeur’s window into this rarefied world, but the view disappoints. It glitters—but this gossipy Junior League set are provincial faux sophisticates forever engaged in spiteful, envious competition (“Sometimes it was exhausting, remembering all the ways we measured each other. The ruler was long and precise.”)—big fish in a small pond. In the end, the secrets hidden by the HOA-regulation-height hedges are truly shocking and the final page is just right.Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.