The tale of a forward air controller, or FAC, in the early days of the Vietnam War—from the author of the novel Cadillac Flight and A Lonely Kind of War. Major Sam Brooks is a fighter pilot, which should give him high status in the Air Force. Instead he's at the end of his career because of a brief affair with his commander's wife. The commander, a Colonel, has dogged Brooks and prevented promotions, despite the fact that Brooks is a fine pilot. Brooks comes to Vietnam with an attitude problem, and, sure enough, runs into his nemesis, who assigns him to a mucky, VC-infested outpost deep in the Mekong Delta, and who turns him into a FAC as well. A FAC guides jets into the target rather than piloting them himself; not only does this seem inglorious to Brooks, but it also seems as though his old enemy is trying to get him killed. Worse, Brooks is insubordinate to superior officers and impatient with garrison routines, so that's it's clear he brings most of his troubles on himself. There are compensations: a pretty civilian trying to introduce miracle rice to the Vietnamese, and the fact that Brooks begins to like flying the little Cessnas. Brooks is an attractive character: a lonely man, not truly a tough guy, and shy around women; his inadequacies for ground combat provide comic relief. But where Harrison, a former FAC pilot himself, shines is in his gripping descriptions of combat flight. The detail is unimpeachable: every creak in the struts, every hard right to dodge .51 caliber fire- -even the grease-pencil mark on the windshield, there to aim the hand-fired rockets. No politics at all here: just men working their machines, and yet when Brooks swoops low and for an instant sees a burning VC, he feels horror at what he's done. Brooks's love affair with Lee is predictable, but he himself is likably troubled, and the air scenes are nothing short of stunning.
Pub Date: May 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-89141-436-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Presidio/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
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
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.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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