An unabashedly patriotic compilation that impressively sheds light on the nature of military life.
A debut collection of short stories detailing the lives of American soldiers.
A contemporary trend in military memoirs is to depict a soldier as more of a victim than a warrior, traumatized rather than ennobled by service. Swimming against that current, O’Meara gathers together six fictional stories that celebrate martial honor while still exposing the grim aspects of warfare. The first, titular story centers on the rigors of boot camp; it’s dominated by the specter of the Vietnam War and tells of the deep camaraderie that results from facing hardship together. In “Cantor’s Fairytale,” the author layers multiple narratives over one another as a group of soldiers passes the time besting each other with beer-soaked tales of military life. “A Sort of War Story” depicts the horrors of an actual battle in which six American infantrymen in Vietnam hold off a troop of enemy soldiers several times their number. The stories don’t sidestep complex issues, such as race; in “Justice,” a black sergeant is threatened with a court martial for stealing a jeep, an unusually harsh and suspicious penalty. However, a jury of officers is offended by the injustice of it all and acquits him of the charges. The dialogue is always gritty, inclining toward authenticity rather than political correctness. For example, an infamously demanding drill sergeant explains the rationale for his mercilessness: “Remember, if somebody dies, and they’re dyin’ everyday, it’s your fault. Remember this little drill—ain’t nothin’ to what we’re gonna’ have to do in the Nam.” The stories use Vietnam as a theme and serve as an instructive counterpoint to narrative accounts, novelistic and cinematic, which often emphasize drug use, amoral abandon, and postbellum trauma as soldiers’ defining features. Still, they present the chilling violence of battle and its psychological impact in unvarnished form. In O’Meara’s telling, despite routine acts of heroism and courage, the soldiers who served in Vietnam did so humbly, out of senses of patriotic ardor and professional pride. Overall, this is a gripping glimpse into the lives of soldiers living and dying side by side.
An unabashedly patriotic compilation that impressively sheds light on the nature of military life.Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5089-2049-6
Page Count: 152
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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