A historically edifying but fictionally uneven war tale.
A thriller unravels the secrets of an elite band of paratroopers and its daring exploits in World War II.
While visiting a military hospital, Sgt. 1st Class Dylan West makes the acquaintance of an older patient who served in World War II. The man petitions Dylan for help—he served in a Parachute Infantry Battalion, and the friends he fought with vanished, never to be found. He hands Dylan a list of seven names and dies shortly thereafter, consecrating his request as a last wish. Dylan’s father disappeared in 1974 while serving in Vietnam, and so the elderly man’s entreaty moves him deeply. Unfortunately, the man is an enigma—no one at the hospital knows who he is, and in his wake he leaves no paper trail. Dylan teams up with Capt. Madeline Custer, a case investigator for the U.S. Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, a doggedly devoted professional who has made extraordinary sacrifices for her country—she lost both her husband and part of her leg in combat. Dylan and Madeline eventually track down two of the names on the list—Griffin Thomas and Vito Cutaia, both still alive and living in the United States. Nevola (Revenge of the Pearl Harbor Survivors, 2011, etc.) slowly unfurls the complex and intriguing story: The men on the list were members of two Parachute Infantry Battalions tasked with nearly impossible missions, like the taking of the Belgian village Rochelinval, the records of which are so buried Dylan and Madeline have never even heard of it. The soldiers were serially mistreated and then unceremoniously resigned to oblivion. The author deftly limns the historical backdrop of the unit members’ fates: Many were Italian-American, and their families were branded "enemy aliens" during the war, an ignominious classification that often entailed a loss of property and livelihood as well as incarceration. While Nevola’s command of the historical details is superb, he bombards readers with too much of everything—factual details, historical context, and digressive subplots. The novel is simply too long, slow, and convoluted as well as too eager to sermonize about the nation’s decline.
A historically edifying but fictionally uneven war tale.Pub Date: May 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4787-2882-5
Page Count: 506
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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