by Bill Norris ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 20, 2014
Norris’ debut historical drama follows a young U.S. soldier sent to Vietnam the same year as the Tet Offensive; he’s confronted with dwindling support back home and mutual animosity and distrust between Americans and South Vietnamese.
It’s 1968, and Pfc. Jared Christopher, barely 20, is stationed in Quang Ngãi. Jared isn’t like some of his fellow soldiers, who hate the local villagers and associate them with the Viet Cong. He quickly befriends a young girl and street vendor, Dam, and later visits an orphanage to drop off food, baby powder and other supplies. The various combat assaults are harrowing: The infantrymen trek through the dense jungle and are often killed by the Viet Cong. But Jared also faces resentment from American soldiers, who view him as a VC sympathizer when he takes in and even hopes to adopt Quang, a Vietnamese boy orphaned by the war. The novel can be a dark, disheartening affair: Jared loses a few of his close friends in combat, and one man in particular, whom Jared greatly admires, is introduced and killed in quick succession. Jared feels overwhelmingly guilty about his own actions, including shooting a boy not yet in his teens. But the protagonist’s good deeds—sitting with a small family and helping polish rice or not telling fellow troops about a woman, possibly a VC, and her newborn baby—give him a sense of purpose and serve as a counterbalance to all the violence. Norris extends the horrors of war to the Vietnamese jungles, filled with giant mosquitoes and leeches, whose knack for digging into the skin is relayed in all its stomach-churning glory. Norris effectively conveys the loss of hope in Vietnam and villagers’ loss of trust in soldiers who don’t respect them. But Jared brings humanity to the story; even Quang, who stays at the Army base, escapes from the orphanage to be with him.
Authentically details a ferocious year in Vietnam and delivers an unforgettable ending.
Pub Date: March 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0991540907
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Nekko Books LLC
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
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
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