However messy this sophomore effort may get in its middle, by the end, when Joan’s secret is revealed, the novel regains its power by suggesting how a mid-20th-century woman’s desires and needs could trap her. Joan, much loved and much criticized by Cece, emerges as a spectacularly tragic figure. The After Party reads like a postmortem of more than just two women’s lives and promises very good things to come from DiSclafani.
If The Big Secret, when it comes, is a letdown, the contrasting connective tissue DiSclafani weaves between Cece and Joan — their scions, mothers, choices and men — is the work of a compelling writer and keeps our attention to the end.
DiSclafani excels at building suspense and has a gift for revealing private worlds through unexpected, telling details...As things progress, [protagonist] Cece seems more like an infatuated stalker than a devoted friend. Perhaps that’s the point, but we never get enough of Cece’s inner life to fully understand it. DiSclafani dangles suggestions about the sexual undertone of Cece’s compulsion and the notion that within a friendship 'one woman always needs the other woman less.' A deeper exploration of these intriguing motivations would have made the book all the richer.
Though the mystery surrounding Joan's walkabouts may be easy for readers to guess early on, Cece stays in the dark for years. At times the wealth and advantage of this world can make The After Party's social tangles seem like less-than-dire stakes. But the satisfying parts of this story ultimately lie elsewhere: in the tender unfolding of Cece's empathy and gratitude for the relationships in her life. As those relationships are stretched to their limits, they confront Cece with a question that haunts every part of this novel: How well can we really know other people — even those we love most dearly?
DiSclafani gorgeously evokes Party’s midcentury setting, and the narrative unfolds much more elegantly than her dense 2013 best-seller, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls. We learn Joan’s secret eventually, but for the reader she remains what she’s always been to Cece: a siren and a cipher.
