Frank Loveless, the hapless protagonist of Boersema’s novel, may be the poster child for John Lyly’s quote, “The rules of fair play do not apply in love and war”; despite being an admitted coward, seducer and habitual liar, Loveless often comes out on top in this amusing story of one man’s accidental success in war.
Loveless’ story, told as a found memoir after he disappears in 1992, relates how he began his career as a callow youth in 1968. Graduating from a lackluster college career capped with a misadventure in the Bahamas, Loveless is shanghaied into the military by his disapproving father and shipped off to Vietnam. His inexplicable ability to bed any woman he wants lands him in hot water—getting his orders switched from a cushy desk job to infantry grunt, to begin with—but he keeps landing in glory. Awarded numerous medals and accolades due to cowardice and incredible luck, Loveless nevertheless finds a way to mess things up, usually through his efforts to sleep with virtually every woman to catch his eye. Despite Loveless’ extensive laundry list of faults, Boersema makes his protagonist endearing, mainly through his unflinching honesty on the page and the cheerful charm with which Loveless lives his life. The wry satirical edge with which the story begins—a lengthy anecdote opening with a can of beans and ending with Loveless’ first medal—wavers throughout the story, as the author seems unsure at times whether he’s telling a serious story with a comical protagonist or vice versa. Still, despite the uneven tone, Loveless as a character remains clear, and his adventures are entertaining throughout, even when foreshadowing toward Loveless’ future adventures becomes heavy-handed. An engagingly flawed protagonist and a grounded sense of reality make Boersema’s novel a smooth, fitfully thoughtful entertainment.
Pub Date: July 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-1434911766
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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