A war novel with a voice all its own, this will stand as one of the definitive renderings of the Iraq experience.
The corrosive psychological effects—and the dark humor—of modern conflict are hauntingly captured in Iraq War veteran Pitre's powerfully understated debut.
Named after a procedure by which Marine convoys maintain the proper distance from a possible roadside bomb, the novel moves in oddly unsettling rhythms between present-day New Orleans, where members of a bomb-defusing unit uneasily reunite, and Iraq, where they had to contend not only with lethal potholes and a nebulous enemy, but also Blackwater-like contractors who couldn't care less about their well-beings. At the heart of the novel is a gangsta rap–loving, increasingly vocal Iraqi translator nicknamed Dodge, who goes to work for the Americans even as his father and brother plot to kill them—not because they hate them but as a way of hastening their exits from the country. Pitre, who served two tours in Iraq, uses his superior powers of observation and empathy to maximum effect; he knows he doesn't have to overdramatize sudden deaths and betrayals and PTSD. And though Dodge's ongoing study of Huckleberry Finn provides metaphoric weight, Pitre plays down his literary aims in favor of a straightforward, even-keeled narrative. Among the many memorable scenes is one in which Lt. Pete Donovan, his nerves already stretched to the max, upbraids a callow young private security officer in an air-conditioned Suburban for exposing his heat-stricken men to a leaking stockpile of toxic chemicals. The story is told from the alternating perspectives of Donovan; his drug-addicted fellow Marine, Doc; and Dodge. Though the narrative voices of Donovan and Doc sometimes blend together, and the scenes on the homefront, where Donovan gets a job with a money management firm, are a bit undercooked, those are minor flaws in a book in which everything rings so unshakably true.
A war novel with a voice all its own, this will stand as one of the definitive renderings of the Iraq experience.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62040-754-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
PROFILES
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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