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
Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.
One of America’s great novelists (Lost Memory of Skin, 2011, etc.) also writes excellent stories, as his sixth collection reminds readers.
Don’t expect atmospheric mood poems or avant-garde stylistic games in these dozen tales. Banks is a traditionalist, interested in narrative and character development; his simple, flexible prose doesn’t call attention to itself as it serves those aims. The intricate, not necessarily permanent bonds of family are a central concern. The bleak, stoic “Former Marine” depicts an aging father driven to extremes because he’s too proud to admit to his adult sons that he can no longer take care of himself. In the heartbreaking title story, the death of a beloved dog signals the final rupture in a family already rent by divorce. Fraught marriages in all their variety are unsparingly scrutinized in “Christmas Party,” Big Dog” and “The Outer Banks." But as the collection moves along, interactions with strangers begin to occupy center stage. The protagonist of “The Invisible Parrot” transcends the anxieties of his hard-pressed life through an impromptu act of generosity to a junkie. A man waiting in an airport bar is the uneasy recipient of confidences about “Searching for Veronica” from a woman whose truthfulness and motives he begins to suspect, until he flees since “the only safe response is to quarantine yourself.” Lurking menace that erupts into violence features in many Banks novels, and here, it provides jarring climaxes to two otherwise solid stories, “Blue” and “The Green Door.” Yet Banks quietly conveys compassion for even the darkest of his characters. Many of them (like their author) are older, at a point in life where options narrow and the future is uncomfortably close at hand—which is why widowed Isabel’s fearless shucking of her confining past is so exhilarating in “SnowBirds,” albeit counterbalanced by her friend Jane’s bleak acceptance of her own limited prospects.
Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-185765-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
Superb stylist L’Amour returns (End of the Drive, 1997, etc.), albeit posthumously, with ten stories never seen before in book form—and narrated in his usual hard-edged, close-cropped sentences, jutting up from under fierce blue skies. This is the first of four collections of L’Amour material expected from Bantam, edited by his daughter Angelique, featuring an eclectic mix of early historicals and adventure stories set in China, on the high seas, and in the boxing ring, all drawing from the author’s exploits as a carnival barker and from his mysterious and sundry travels. During this period, L’Amour was trying to break away from being a writer only of westerns. Also included is something of an update on Angelique’s progress with her father’s biography: i.e., a stunningly varied list of her father’s acquaintances from around the world whom she’d like to contact for her research. Meanwhile, in the title story here, a missionary’s daughter who crashes in northern Asia during the early years of the Sino-Japanese War is taken captive by a nomadic leader and kept as his wife for 15 years, until his death. When a plane lands, she must choose between taking her teenaged son back to civilization or leaving him alone with the nomads. In “By the Waters of San Tadeo,” set on the southern coast of Chile, Julie Marrat, whose father has just perished, is trapped in San Esteban, a gold field surrounded by impassable mountains, with only one inlet available for anyone’s escape. “Meeting at Falmouth,” a historical, takes place in January 1794 during a dreadful Atlantic storm: “Volleys of rain rattled along the cobblestones like a scattering of broken teeth.” In this a notorious American, unnamed until the last paragraph, helps Talleyrand flee to America. A master storyteller only whets the appetite for his next three volumes.
Pub Date: May 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-553-10963-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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