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ALONE IN THE VALLEY

Name: ALONE IN THE VALLEY
Author: Kenneth Waymon Baker
ISBN: 1-877946-17-6

by Kenneth Waymon Baker ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1992

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First novel about an infantryman in Vietnam by a disabled Vietnam vet from Georgia. What immediately distinguishes this novel from others by writers like Larry Heinemann, Philip Caputo, or even Tim O'Brien is the touching naivetÇ of its young hero, Daniel Perdue. When we first meet him, he has just arrived in-country and is struggling manfully to comprehend what's going on. He's deeply offended by the constant, casual profanity of his fellow soldiers. When an artillery mission begins, he doesn't know it's friendly fire and drops to the ground in fear. As Baker puts it, Daniel ``was just one scared little boy trying his damndest not to look like a scared little boy.'' And while Daniel soon learns how to keep silent on patrol, how to identify punji sticks, and how to kill, he doesn't stop being a little boy, caught up in something monstrous, trying merely to survive. On the way through his tour, Daniel meets poor blacks, Hispanics, southern whites, and, of course, Vietnamese; Baker's way with dialogue is uncanny. No one here is cut out of cardboard, and there is no hatred in the book's tone, no swaggering, no politics. Daniel watches friend after friend die and is scarred and saddened forever; his loss of innocence is the fondest of tragedies. Yet there's a refreshing sweetness to Daniel, as in his long debate about whether to go with a prostitute. If he expects his future wife to be a virgin, which he does, then he should be, too. On the other hand, he might die before the sun sets, and he doesn't want to die pure. A well-written and unassuming debut novel whose very artlessness is its principle virtue. Though his voice is unique, Baker tells it exactly as it was.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1992

ISBN: 1-877946-17-6

Page Count: 296

Publisher: Permanent Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.