by Leonard Reese ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 11, 2018
An affecting account of war and its consequences undercut by overly ornate prose.
Reese’s debut memoir chronicles his tour of duty in Vietnam and subsequent struggle with PTSD.
After watching the televised version of the Tet Offensive in 1968, Reese enlisted in the Marines in a fit of patriotism. As a result, he did a 13-month tour of duty as a rifleman in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam, with the 2nd platoon of Charlie Company. His experience was harrowing, and the emotional aftermath continues to resonate. The author leaps back and forth in time from the period before his service in Vietnam starting in 1969, his service as a soldier, and the many years following, during which he attended Stephen F. Austin State University courtesy of the GI Bill, married, and became a father to two children. While in Vietnam, Reese contends with the brutalities of war: deadly ambushes by the enemy and the constant state of anxiety, the grim necessity to take the lives of strangers, and the crushing experience of seeing friends die before his eyes. When the author returns to the United States, he’s tormented by memories of his service but also drawn to reconnect with his fellow Marines, longing to restore that deep sense of purpose and fellowship. He attends a reunion of his Marine division in 1996 and even returns to Vietnam in 2000 in search of some elusive sense of closure. Reese’s remembrance is impressionistically constructed. Rather than a linear history, he furnishes a series of mostly brief vignettes. As he announces in the beginning, his primary emphasis is less an accounting of events than an interrogation of emotions—with unflinching candor, he plumbs the depths of his trauma. And his discussion is consistently a sensitively nuanced one—despite the gruesomeness of his experience, he repeatedly affirms his pride in being a Marine as well as his loyalty to his fellow soldiers. One of the most heartening aspects of the book is the support he enthusiastically offers and receives from those who suffered in the same war. Conversely, one of the saddest aspects is the encapsulating nature of the soldiers’ grief—it seems difficult for them to receive assistance from those who weren’t there, the participation in the war a precondition for understanding its emotional toll. The author boldly takes poetic risks with his prose, which is highly stylized and broodingly meditative. However, occasionally those risks don’t pay off and result in melodramatic overwriting, especially with dialogue. In response to a question from his wife, the author says, “That past has become a stranger to me. Like late-afternoon shadows that turn to face a deadening dusk, I am lost. Its clear-color outlines now bleed, to fading stonewashed madras. Once-distinct sounds mute into distant thunder from the crashing lie of heat-lightning, and cloud-formed shapes diffuse in wayward winds. Frozen and red, the touch of the wind becomes numb.”
An affecting account of war and its consequences undercut by overly ornate prose.Pub Date: April 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73205-080-8
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Cindystrong, LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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