THE BIG WAR

by Anton Myrer ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 1957

A long, overlong novel deals with a Marine Corps squad, tracing its progress from the end of the training period to its near-decimation in a Pacific island invasion in 1944. The author has centered his focus on three young men, using their last furlough before shipping overseas as the springboard for his inquiry. The trio in composed of a Harvard intellectual from a Beacon Hill family, a Greek-American from a mill-town background, and an Irish boy from Rhode Island, orphaned from childhood. When they go into action, two of them are killed, leaving the Irish boy as the sole survivor and inheritor of the postwar prosperity and security promised the serviceman. Mr. Myrer's style, which is wordy and occasionally pretentious, slows the narrative. But the book has many strong features; the severity of Marine discipline; the emotional strain of a first combat experience and the torments of fear and fatigue; and the invasion scenes are the high points of the book. Here the author makes his characters examine their emotions, and wonder what all the shooting is about... The publisher's big gun, and they will give it full support- this may well reach the wide popular audience of The and the Dead to which it will certainly be compared.

Pub Date: April 24, 1957

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Appleton-Century-Crofts

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1957

Categories: FICTION