by J. Everett Prewitt ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 30, 2015
A fresh re-examination of race in the military.
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Prewitt’s (Snake Walkers, 2005) mystery confronts the wages of both war and racial conflict.
Anthony Andrews, a black reporter for the Washington Post in 1969, is tasked with finding positive depictions of the black soldier’s experience in Vietnam, what his editor calls “hero stories.” Andrews is embedded in an active, combat-ready unit and given an eye-opening taste of the horrors of war. He sees seven black soldiers return from some nebulous mission shrouded in mystery. Andrews learns that those seven—originally 15—are returning from a harrowing experience no one seems anxious to discuss. He also discovers that their alleged mission was more like penance for what may have been a riot, uprising, or some kind of brawling melee that involved more than 40 black soldiers angry at their white superiors for mistreatment. After two months investigating the story and hitting a dead end, Andrews returns stateside, haunted by the trauma of his violent experience. Andrews’ angry and disillusioned wife eventually leaves him, and his once-peaceful life starts to unravel. He finally receives an unsolicited phone call that potentially promises to move him closer to the truth about his stonewalled case. This is a nuanced exploration of the racial tensions that express themselves within the pressurized context of war. Prewitt does a fine job allowing those tensions to reveal themselves through the characters rather than through authorial proselytizing. Some of the plot development, though, seems needlessly compressed and, as a result, melodramatic. Andrews is quick to fall apart after his first frightening experience in Vietnam, just as his wife is inexplicably ready to leave him with their young child after a few weeks of arguments over domestic banalities. Also, some narrative anomalies are more distracting than gripping: one soldier, nicknamed Professor, aids his comrades with his psychic abilities. As a whole, however, this is an intelligently crafted tale, brimming with both suspense and social commentary.
A fresh re-examination of race in the military.Pub Date: July 30, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Kirkus Prize
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National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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