A gripping account that will appeal to fiction-lovers and war historians alike.
A 17-year-old protagonist captures the Vietnam War experience with eloquence and wit.
Richard Murphy drops out of high school during his senior year to volunteer for the Vietnam War. He likens the opportunity to the rush a football player feels when he’s headed to the playoffs, making it clear that Richard is not your typical 1970-era army enlistee. Neither is this slim novel the typical, ham-handed war epoch. Vidaurri, who also served in Vietnam from 1970 to 1972, paints a complex image of the war, using excerpts of fictionalized letters and subtle psychological analysis. Wide-eyed and observant, Richard arrives in Chu Lai, Vietnam, and immediately realizes the worthlessness of his army training. He has never seen a land mine, isn’t aware that he should avoid bathing alone in the rivers and is nearly flattened by the oppressive heat. But after adapting, he becomes a tank gunner who witnesses the quiet beauty of Vietnam as well as the brutality of war. The author describes the thrill of pristine beaches and the South China Sea as well as the hazards of fire ants, snakes and tree mines. We meet Mata, a stoic soldier on his fifth tour of Vietnam who walks off into the jungle rather than leave the country with the rest of the army. Richard and his best friend Edward celebrate their 19th birthdays together; later Richard retrieves the faceless body of his friend after he is killed by a landmine. During his time off, Richard reads Capote, Hemingway, Maugham and a host of other literary icons. The author surrounds the teen with expressive imagery and scenes filled with breathless action, writing with enough detail to pull readers into this tension-filled world. After almost two years in the war, Richard becomes disconnected from his life in Los Angeles–he’s entranced by the constant adrenaline surge and wants to stay in Vietnam. Vidaurri weaves a bittersweet tale that leaves readers similarly enthralled.
A gripping account that will appeal to fiction-lovers and war historians alike.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4196-4858-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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