Though stretching credibility at times, Arvin makes a worthy and felt addition to retrospective WWII fiction.
A vividly told first novel about a WWII soldier who never quite understands what’s going on.
When the good but vacuous George Tilson arrives at Omaha Beach (the landings are over), he’s nicknamed “Heck” because that’s his strongest swear word. Heck is from Iowa, 18, and naive, and at once he begins somehow to fall between the cracks, waiting for an assignment that never comes, while others around him are sent off to the front. In scenes only half-believable, he wanders from camp, helps a little French kid who’s injured by a mine, ends up being seduced by the kid’s pretty sister Claire—and, spastically embarrassed, runs away before consummation. Finally attached to a unit and under a night artillery barrage—rivetingly described—Heck discovers that he’s a coward, huddles in his foxhole against orders, and gets separated from his unit. When he then gashes his leg in a fall before finding the others, he’s sent rearward—where, as the seriously wounded suffer and die, he once again somehow goes all but unnoticed. Wandering into town one day, he comes upon Claire’s father—who accuses him of having gotten Claire pregnant. Once again, Heck flees. He’s sent to a unit on harrowing wintertime forest duty, sees death, finds himself once again under heavy fire—and holds his arm up until a bullet pierces it, sending him rearward again. But a ranking fellow soldier sees what he does, and later, after more turns of events, takes the opportunity to punish Heck in an unusual, apropos, and fiercely trying way—one that will hold the reader breathless. Arvin (stories: In the Electric Eden, 2003) opens and closes with references to a real-life Private Eddie D. Slovik, shot for desertion in 1944. Heck’s poor story, subtly enveloped inside Slovik’s, becomes only the more lamentable and sad.
Though stretching credibility at times, Arvin makes a worthy and felt addition to retrospective WWII fiction.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-385-51277-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
