Letters from War’s Edge

Early in Alice McDermott’s 2006 novel After This, a thirty-year-old unmarried woman named Mary Keane struggles with how to respond to some gossip shared by her officemate, Pauline. On the one hand, Mary doesn’t want to take delight in the humiliation of others, fearing that to make a habit of doing so will eventually make her “a part of the whispering spinster chorus at the edge of other, more interesting lives.” Tread carefully, Pauline’s character seems to suggest: act like an emotional vampire and you’ll become one.