A gripping account of naval combat during the Vietnam War.
In Moore’s military drama, a convoy of American ships conducts perilous missions along the Cambodian border during the Vietnam War.
Ted Harris, captain of Alpha-10, an assault support patrol boat, is unhappy about his new orders; he is to lead an armada of ships to Chau Doc near the Cambodian border to create a blockade in a narrow canal he has never heard of. The trip itself proves to be fraught with danger—he’s assured early on by Nguyet Pham, a Vietnamese volunteer, that the quiet of their environs won’t last. (“Will not be boring for long, Mr. Boat Captain.”) Even when the crew isn’t contending with ambushes and sniper fire, the heat and humidity prove oppressive, the mosquitos are ubiquitous and unmerciful, and venomous snakes are everywhere (the atmosphere of pervasive danger is powerfully depicted by the author). Eric Bingo, one of Harris’ gunners, is nearly killed by a snake bite. Harris is also beleaguered by emotional anxiety—his pregnant wife hasn’t written to him in weeks, which is a terrible blow to a soldier who lives to hear news from home. (“The night was tough on Ted Harris. He didn’t know what he would do if it weren’t for his crew. No word from his pregnant wife about anything. His mind wandered: had she met someone? If so, who would want to date a pregnant woman?”)
Moore furnishes a meticulous account of military life in Vietnam and examines the bewildered disorientation of the soldiers, who often express an agitated confusion about the ultimate purpose of the war (they’re quite reasonably afraid to die for nothing). The author’s research is magisterial—readers get a vivid impression, replete with exacting detail, of the Navy’s strategies and operations in Vietnam. Even more impressive is the depiction of the emotional strain on the sailors, many of whom were drafted; some enlisted in the Army but were shuffled into the Navy due to a demand for seamen. Many of them are barely men—Bingo is only 18 years old and a mama’s boy, an innocent who loses his virginity to a Vietnamese sex worker in one of the most strangely moving scenes in the novel. (“Bingo grasped the moment, mounted her, poked and poked, but had no success in placing his wrapped penis anywhere near an entry point, wondering why and if she was diseased. Tiring of being prodded, Lee took his prick and inserted it where it belonged while Bingo, grateful, bent down to kiss the prostitute.”) The author’s prose has its limitations; it can be clumsy and cliched, and a touch sentimental. (In an epilogue, Scott Gardiner—former radioman on Alpha-10, now an accounting professor in Massachusetts— reflects back on the war in a way that is unabashedly lachrymose.) Nevertheless, this is a remarkably meticulous account of the war experience and a keen exploration of the emotional challenges faced by men risking their lives for a cause they don’t understand.
A gripping account of naval combat during the Vietnam War.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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