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 strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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