A sometimes-confusing tale that doesn’t stand out from the crowd of Vietnam War narratives.
Meece’s (Drifting in Paradise, 2017, etc.) novel follows a sonar technician on the USS Abel in the South China Sea during the Vietnam War.
Petty Officer John Mason longs for his home state of Kentucky as he reckons with the unfamiliar surroundings of combat. The story starts with the Abel patrolling near a small fishing village, anchoring, handing out soda to South Vietnamese soldiers, and receiving orders to shell the nearby forest for days on end. From Mason’s perspective, the banal cruelty of the artillery strike is just another sign of the corruption of an American government that took him away from his fiancee, Sonya, and threw him into harm’s way. Meanwhile, there’s race and class oppression on the Abel, where the enlisted men resent the overbearing, shortsighted officers. Their conversations aboard the ship and belowdecks veer from good-natured joking to nihilistic musing, often from one moment to the next. As the ship moves up the coastline to Hong Kong and back, the crew’s frustration heats up until it reaches a boiling point. And when Mason learns that Sonya has moved on, he feels that he has little left to lose. There are moments of striking depth in this book (“The lives of all are staked on the performance of each”) and other occasions of hilarity, but generally the dialogue feels stilted. Meece does employ some uniquely vivid language at times: “What an offer! I accept with alacrity”; “You imagine the satisfying feel of fisting him good in the middle of his face.” However, the frequent, midchapter shifts in perspective can be confusing; one moment, Mason is relating events in the first person, and then a third-person narrator takes over. Most oddly, the narration addresses Mason as “you” when it delves into Mason’s past. These stylistic choices make the prose difficult to follow and add little to the story.
A sometimes-confusing tale that doesn’t stand out from the crowd of Vietnam War narratives.Pub Date: June 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5446-6323-4
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Kwest House
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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