In this debut novel, a college student on a U.S. Army nursing scholarship joins the anti–Vietnam War movement.
It’s Sept. 15, 1969, the day after Judy Talton’s 19th birthday and the day that she decides to change her path. At Central Illinois University’s student union, she sits with the radical students for the first time. After an argument between anti-war protest leader David and the ROTC kids, Judy is approached by Vida, who says she’s been watching her hanging out on the group’s fringes. Other members of the radical group emerge, including Wil, whose birthday is also Sept. 14 (which becomes important later). The group is pushing a petition supporting anti-war political-science professor Swanson, who’s in jeopardy of losing his job. There’s also anxiety about the upcoming draft lottery, which is scheduled to happen right after Thanksgiving. Instantly, Judy is swept up in the movement and takes part in the “Moratorium” event (a national day of protest against the war) and then a march in Washington, D.C. But through it all, Judy tries to keep a low profile, as protesting the war could result in her having to pay the Army back for her scholarship; she also goes to great pains to keep her Army connection a secret from her new friends. The conflict intensifies throughout the novel, particularly when Judy decides to go to Washington, which makes her AWOL: a criminal offense. Throughout, the author does a fine job of complicating and building Judy’s dilemma. The divide between Judy’s old life and her new one continues to cause her angst, which ramps up the tension regarding her various choices. What isn’t made clear, however, is why Judy initially decides to risk her scholarship, which she very much needs, in order to join the radical group. This is a symptom of a larger issue, which is the fact that Judy’s motivations are unclear, even to Judy—which, in turn, may make it difficult for readers to understand her. Still, she makes a sacrifice in a finale that’s well-crafted, surprising, and inevitable.
An often fresh take on the collegiate anti-war movement in small-town America.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63152-453-0
Page Count: 377
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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While a few weeks ago it seemed as if Praeger would have a two month lead over Dutton in their presentation of this Soviet best seller, both the "authorized" edition (Dutton's) and the "unauthorized" (Praeger's) will appear almost simultaneously. There has been considerable advance attention on what appears to be as much of a publishing cause celebre here as the original appearance of the book in Russia. Without entering into the scrimmage, or dismissing it as a plague on both your houses, we will limit ourselves to a few facts. Royalties from the "unauthorized" edition will go to the International Rescue Committee; Dutton with their contracted edition is adhering to copyright conventions. The Praeger edition has two translators and one of them is the translator of Doctor Zhivago Dutton's translator, Ralph Parker, has been stigmatized by Praeger as "an apologist for the Soviet regime". To the untutored eye, the Dutton translation seems a little more literary, the Praeger perhaps closer to the rather primitive style of the original. The book itself is an account of one day in the three thousand six hundred and fifty three days of the sentence to be served by a carpenter, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. (Solzhenitsyn was a political prisoner.) From the unrelenting cold without, to the conditions within, from the bathhouse to the latrine to the cells where survival for more than two weeks is impossible, this records the hopeless facts of existence as faced by thousands who went on "living like this, with your eyes on the ground". The Dutton edition has an excellent introduction providing an orientation on the political background to its appearance in Russia by Marvin Kalb. All involved in its publication (translators, introducers, etc.) claim for it great "artistic" values which we cannot share, although there is no question of its importance as a political and human document and as significant and tangible evidence of the de-Stalinization program.
Pub Date: June 15, 1963
ISBN: 0451228146
Page Count: 181
Publisher: Praeger
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1963
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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