A gripping narrative that explores the consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the camaraderie and perseverance of...
In Hajdu’s (The Spirit of Palm Springs, 2005, etc.) latest novel, the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq is told by the men and women of the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division.
“April 9, 2003, was the day Baghdad fell,” Hajdu writes, “yet the war wasn’t over; the most difficult part of the job was still ahead and total victory years away.” It is now known that the invasion of Iraq, lasting only 21 days, failed to predict the challenges Allied forces would encounter during the formation of a new Iraqi government. In addition to the occupation of Iraq and the anxieties of combat, Hajdu focuses on the American home front. For example, Pvt. Jake Nevitzky, in Iraq, and his father, Harry, in a U.S. hospital, struggle to maintain communication after Harry suffers a stroke and attempts to regain his short-term memory. Meanwhile, in Iraq, Cpl. Levente Laszlo is taken prisoner during an ambush and interrogated by Ahmed al Libya, a Western-educated Iraqi soldier. Also in Iraq, Jake and his boyhood friend David Johnson serve together in the 3rd Infantry Division. Three years after the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, they travel home to Phoenix, Arizona, from their second tour. “The young soldiers were treated like rock stars,” Hajdu writes. “People came up to them, thanking [them] for their service, and they didn’t have to walk over to the USO lounge to find hospitability; at the bar, the free drinks were flowing.” Later, however, David’s mother confides in Jake that her son is suffering from depression. Emotionally unavailable, David must learn to coexist with the horrific memories of war without destroying himself. Ultimately, Hajdu illuminates the soldiers’ returns to society without relying on sentimentality or over-the-top patriotism. Romance between Sgt. Mario Alvarado and embedded reporter Dana Jensen, for instance, acts as a narrative thread woven throughout the book, emphasizing the vulnerability and desires of combatants and noncombatants alike. In the end, no matter how traumatic the experience of war and the trials of everyday life, hope exists while life endures.
A gripping narrative that explores the consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the camaraderie and perseverance of America’s veterans.Pub Date: May 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5084-5427-4
Page Count: 148
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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