A well-written, surprisingly straightforward account of a not-so-straightforward war.
Second outing from Huebner (American by Blood, 2000) is pitched as a fictionalized version of the author’s relationship with his Gulf War veteran brother.
Sergeant E-5 Smith Huebner is trained to shoot the big gun in an M-1 A-1 Heavy Armor tank. He can kill with his hands or his weapon, and he knows that “the same firepower that guarded his life could kill him in an instant.” When he arrives with his group in Kuwait, tensions rise in an encounter with some Bedouins, but it will be a while before the war begins—and at least a month before anyone gets used to the heat. Back in the States, meanwhile, younger brother Sam, whom Smith had taught to smoke pot and who’s moved to New York to struggle as a writer, begins protesting the war and cultivating a drug habit. And Smith’s wife turns up pregnant. Smith is thrilled, but all he can do is document the army equipment and stare out into the desert. When the war finally begins, there’s no small amount of patriotic fanfare as a CO walks past the troops to ask what they’re fighting for and “the names, places and pledges filled the air.” Good thing, too, for it’s not long before Smith is putting tank shells through the chests of Iraqi officers. His crew feels bad about this, sure, but they’ll be fine, the reasoning goes, as long as they imagine themselves as the De Niro character in The Deer Hunter. Huebner (the author) has the banter of tank battles down and doesn’t approach war entirely without irony, but the very excitement of some sequences here feels celebratory. At end, Johnny comes marching home, and if there’s tension between the soldier and his peacenik brother it soon evaporates, and peace settles softly over the republic.
A well-written, surprisingly straightforward account of a not-so-straightforward war.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-1277-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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