A powerful war account, eye-opening and moving.
A veteran recollects his traumatic experiences serving in the Vietnam War and the emotional reverberations appearing long after in this memoir.
Gauvin grew up in northern Maine, raised in a strictly Roman Catholic/French Canadian family. The sudden death of his father, Hector, loomed large over his teenage years. When the author attended St. Thomas University, he was shiftless and distracted, no longer the hardworking student of his high school days. He decided to enlist in the Army under the impression that his chosen specialization—X-ray technician—and a longer enlistment would keep him out of Vietnam, where war raged. That proved false; he was sent to Saigon in 1968 and assigned to the Wound Data Munitions Effectiveness Team. This “exclusive team” studied the wounds of fallen American soldiers. In effect, it meant the performance of autopsies on the warriors, work so ghastly and demoralizing it was generally kept a secret. The experience exacted a terrible emotional toll on Gauvin, a suffering he recounts both candidly and poignantly: “After a year in Vietnam, I feared I had lost the foundation of beliefs I had built my entire life upon. Was there really a God? And if there was, WHAT THE HELL WAS HE THINKING?” The author would marry, start a family, and find financial success, but he was dogged by PTSD, a condition that expanded from mood swings to “all-out rages.” In addition, he was diagnosed with diabetes, a disease that may have been tied to his exposure to Agent Orange while in Vietnam. Gauvin’s struggle is lucidly conveyed—he paints a painfully vivid picture of both the horrors of war and the grim consequences. And while the core of his book is a familiar one—there is no shortage of literature on either the Vietnam conflict or its aftermath—his discussion of his work for the WDMET distinguishes his contribution to the genre. For those in search of a different perspective on the ghastliness of that complex war, this memoir is an instructive and affecting remembrance.
A powerful war account, eye-opening and moving.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 192
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engaging childhood memoir and a deeply affectionate tribute to the author’s parents.
The bestselling author recalls her childhood and her family’s wartime experiences.
Readers of Winspear’s popular Maisie Dobbs mystery series appreciate the London investigator’s canny resourcefulness and underlying humanity as she solves her many cases. Yet Dobbs had to overcome plenty of hardships in her ascent from her working-class roots. Part of the appeal of Winspear’s Dobbs series are the descriptions of London and the English countryside, featuring vividly drawn particulars that feel like they were written with firsthand knowledge of that era. In her first book of nonfiction, the author sheds light on the inspiration for Dobbs and her stories as she reflects on her upbringing during the 1950s and ’60s. She focuses much attention on her parents’ lives and their struggles supporting a family, as they chose to live far removed from their London pasts. “My parents left the bombsites and memories of wartime London for an openness they found in the country and on the land,” writes Winspear. As she recounts, each of her parents often had to work multiple jobs, which inspired the author’s own initiative, a trait she would apply to the Dobbs character. Her parents recalled grueling wartime experiences as well as stories of the severe battlefield injuries that left her grandfather shell-shocked. “My mother’s history,” she writes, “became my history—probably because I was young when she began telling me….Looking back, her stories—of war, of abuse at the hands of the people to whom she and her sisters had been billeted when evacuated from London, of seeing the dead following a bombing—were probably too graphic for a child. But I liked listening to them.” Winspear also draws distinctive portraits of postwar England, altogether different from the U.S., where she has since settled, and her unsettling struggles within the rigid British class system.
An engaging childhood memoir and a deeply affectionate tribute to the author’s parents.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64129-269-6
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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