A meandering, unfocused story of military men.
A tightknit group of U.S. Air Force airmen chase promotions and women in Gore’s (Short Rounds, 2018, etc.) historical novel.
After World War II, the Air Force prioritized the technological development and training of an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) fleet. Its aircraft were equipped with sophisticated long-range radar capabilities that made them powerful tools against possible Soviet attacks, as well as for the ongoing war on drugs. Gore chronicles the experiences of several Air Force airmen in the 1980s who flew and supported AWACS missions, and whose friendships were fired in the crucible of military training. This sprawling account is built around the men’s camaraderie, as well as their seemingly obsessive searches for female companionship. For example, Lt. Koepernick, though married, keeps a mistress who aspires to be a strip club owner; later, he likes to think of himself as “righteously gangster” as he builds his own minor business empire—some of it criminal. Lt. Walden’s girlfriend, Crystal, reacts so poorly to news of their breakup that he ultimately gets a restraining order against her. Readers are also treated to love letters written by fellow airmen Zip, Jeff, and Gordon to the women in their lives. Gore provides a remarkably detailed and often engaging account of the training missions that the talented men endure, as well as their seemingly ceaseless globe-trotting. The author served for a decade on an AWACS aircraft, so his knowledge of this milieu is extraordinary. He also vividly captures the esprit de corps that binds the men together, and the hilarity that often results from it. However, the novel lacks a solid plot, overall; instead, it reads like an account of random happenings, rather than a coherent story—and a long one, at that. It’s also easy for readers to forget the urgency of the Cold War, which is occasionally alluded to (“Competing worldviews, civilization hanging in the balance, all that stuff they drilled into us at OTS, you remember”) but rarely discussed at any length.
A meandering, unfocused story of military men.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5348-1149-2
Page Count: 456
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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