Kaleidoscopic, nightmarish images that don’t paint over the horror.
A gruesome wartime memoir written by a bad boy who found himself in the Marines and Vietnam.
Nedwick prided himself on being a decent family man and a successful businessman; in Vietnam, it was different. As Nedwick writes it, his story is straight out of The Dirty Dozen, but “it is up to the reader to determine fact from fiction,” since, he says, the material comes from flashbacks and recovered memories after the military administered drugs and electroshock therapy to wipe his brain. While in the brig for having murdered a fellow soldier, he was plucked from a likely date with the gallows to serve in an ultrasecret force of seven men set to drop behind enemy lines and do the dirtiest of the dirty work. They were all “derelicts, renegades and rejects,” but the barbarous acts they committed left most of them thoroughly dehumanized. Some of the men “do” entire villages: torturing, raping, murdering, burning them flat in an exercise they thought would besmirch the Vietnamese guerrillas, who, Nedwick suggests, did the same to keep the population in line. “Sandies [jet fighters] were napping [napalming] the fuck out of those slant-eyed scum bastards,” Nedwick writes. “We were close enough to see the skin melting off the face of one of the dinks.” There are plenty more descriptions like this, reflecting a repulsive trail of hate, misery and mayhem for which Nedwick has paid the price: “[W]e were barbaric, sadistic, merciless killers and, we live with it everyday [sic].” His ingenuous memoir introduces readers to that dark place: a mind unhinged, then trained to do the most despicable of crimes. In his unvarnished way, Nedwick brings it home, proving war is hell no matter how many Geneva Conventions.
Kaleidoscopic, nightmarish images that don’t paint over the horror.Pub Date: May 23, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456590482
Page Count: 356
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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