A well-told story about finding new beginnings in the aftermath of defeat.
Bourg’s debut novel takes an epic look at French defeat in Vietnam and the entwined lives of the locals, soldiers and foreign nationals trying to survive in unstable times.
Max Kohl, a German and a career soldier who grew up indoctrinated in the Hitler Youth, now finds himself in the French Foreign Legion. In 1954, he walks out of Isabelle, a remote area of the Dien Bien Phu province. Loc, a Tai who has sided with the French, leads Max out of the mountainous battlefield after the French are defeated by the Vietminh. The two become infamous and inseparable, navigating post-colonialism in Saigon and Laos. Max decides to no longer blindly follow the causes of those who employ him; instead, he leads his life by repaying the loyalty of others and protecting those he cares about. Max and Loc cross paths with Petru Rossi, a Corsican gangster focused on keeping his interests in the opium trade. Also in the opium and information business is CIA agent Tom Roche, who works with Max to help a mountain tribe escape to Laos. In turn, Max helps the Americans solidify their place in Vietnam through covert missions and violent encounters. In another third-person perspective, the book also follows Mei, who becomes a concubine for the French troops after being sold into prostitution by her father. Loc briefly crosses paths with Mei in Dien Bien Phu but isn’t reunited with her until after she is released from a communist labor camp. Bourg provides a detailed account of the battle that marks the fall of France in Vietnam as well as Max and Loc’s journey out of Isabelle. Many situations and characters are introduced, which Bourg capably manages, and character development is strong, particularly for a novel this heavily rooted in action. Most compellingly, Max changes from a hardened hired soldier to a loyal member of his makeshift family with Loc and Mei.
A well-told story about finding new beginnings in the aftermath of defeat.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9910076-0-8
Page Count: 784
Publisher: Three Greyhounds
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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