A powerful antidote to those who would glorify war.
The fifth installment in Lynch’s Vietnam series continues the story of four friends who entered the war together and have now been forever changed by it.
Though Volume 4, Casualties of War (2013), seemed to have concluded the series, Lynch again takes readers into the minds and souls of Morris, Rudi, Beck and Ivan. Once Rudi was drafted, it was Morris’ idea that the four friends would go to Vietnam together, each in a different branch of the service, and somehow keep an eye on one another. Now Rudi has been killed, and Morris goes home as his body escort. Morris feels guilty for forcing everyone into this, and now he’s trying to discern meaning from their experience of death in a war they never really understood. This volume continues the first-person narratives in the voices of the four friends, even Rudi’s, though now his is a ghostly voice, a questionable contrivance at first but one that ultimately make sense in the overall arc of the story; each of the characters is haunted, and the only meaning they can make is that “You don’t have to believe in the war, to believe in the guys.” If there’s not a tidy conclusion, it’s because the fate of the walking wounded is inscrutable.
A powerful antidote to those who would glorify war. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-64013-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
Well-educated American boys from privileged families have abundant options for college and career. For Chiko, their Burmese counterpart, there are no good choices. There is never enough to eat, and his family lives in constant fear of the military regime that has imprisoned Chiko’s physician father. Soon Chiko is commandeered by the army, trained to hunt down members of the Karenni ethnic minority. Tai, another “recruit,” uses his streetwise survival skills to help them both survive. Meanwhile, Tu Reh, a Karenni youth whose village was torched by the Burmese Army, has been chosen for his first military mission in his people’s resistance movement. How the boys meet and what comes of it is the crux of this multi-voiced novel. While Perkins doesn’t sugarcoat her subject—coming of age in a brutal, fascistic society—this is a gentle story with a lot of heart, suitable for younger readers than the subject matter might suggest. It answers the question, “What is it like to be a child soldier?” clearly, but with hope. (author’s note, historical note) (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58089-328-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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