With his finger firmly placed on soldiers’ wartime experiences, the author delivers a potent, thrilling collection of...
A group of stories provides military melodrama and trouble galore.
Dedicated to “those in peril on the sea,” Hess’ (Unloaded, 2016, etc.) atmospheric and moody collection of 16 war-themed tales offers characters who find plenty of danger all on their own. The impressive title story, which takes place aboard the USS San Jacinto, seems drawn straight from a fictional Navy man’s journal. The first-person narration brings readers to the battle stations of a ship at the mercy of storms, death, and long months at sea yet concludes with a homecoming saluting the fierce allegiance, pride, and American patriotism of the armed forces. When two shipmates quarrel in the striking tale “Last Battle Aboard the Old Pro,” the outcome is violent and unexpected. Through authentic dialogue and jagged details, Hess’ stories become effective snapshots of military life, including its unsavory aspects as well as the provocative ones. This occurs best in the daring, crass, sexually charged game of “Smiles” enjoyed among randy crewmates docked on Philippine soil, where a soldier preparing to leave on honorable discharge winds up dissatisfied with the prostitutes who shimmy around him “as if they are sandwiches in a vending machine.” Elsewhere, the unpredictable chaos of military duty dominates: ships are tossed around amid rough seas; death saturates a Navy crew with the mere unlatching of a watertight engine room hatch; and the unforeseen suicide of a lieutenant discovered by a smitten soldier in “Here Today, Guam Tomorrow” proves a painful coda to a hardscrabble story about finding human connections on the Pacific island. The physical and mental fallout from war for soldiers is palpable in less contemporary tales like “Strong to Save,” set in 1949, and the racially charged “Attention on Deck,” in which a white Navy man in 1972 witnesses hate and anger from a group of black sailors eager to settle the score. Tension is at its highest in the exhilarating “Cash for G_d,” in which a desperate ex–Navy sailor holds up a grocery store at gunpoint, with the result ending up much bloodier than he’d anticipated. Cohesively rough and edgy, Hess’ heady volume should appeal to fans of military suspense as well as readers who want a generous slice of hardened Navy SEAL action stocked with grizzly servicemen doing the best they can.
Pub Date: May 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943402-82-3
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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