A slightly different kind of Vietnam tale by a gifted writer.
An ambitious debut novella that offers a Vietnam war story with a clever plot device involving astrology, dreams, and omens.
Debut novelist Garvey, a Vietnam veteran, focuses on one man, Lt. John “Bat Guano” McManus, in a tale based on a true story. McManus grows up with his uncles’ war stories and years later, in 1968, he impulsively joins the army. In his last week stateside, he chances upon a book by astrologer Sidney Omar (apparently based on the real-life Sydney Omarr). A random opening of the text gives him a page on “August, the 17th” and he becomes hooked by the carefully ambiguous entry, which says that the day calls for, among other things, “an unpremeditated act of courage, and that he would have to pass some cosmic test.” (This conceit may sound hokey, but readers will find that Garvey manages to pull it off.) The 17th of August, as a concept, “crawled inside his head, made a nest, and fouled it.” The story then marches inexorably to its fiery climax, when McManus’ men find themselves camped near the Cambodian border facing an enemy who outnumbers them by perhaps 20-to-1. Much of his outfit is composed of Montagnards—fierce, and fiercely independent, mountain people whom McManus comes to respect deeply and even love. They, like him, are avid believers in dreams as omens, which fosters a very strong bond between the young lieutenant and his grunts. Garvey does a good job of building suspense—one can almost see the calendar pages flip by—as August 17, 1968, looms, the exact day when the North Vietnamese military plans to launch a massive assault. McManus, as Garvey portrays him, is far from gung-ho; in fact, he’s very ambivalent about the war and terrified most of the time, but he has a job to do, and he does it honorably. The climax is a scene which begs for the big screen treatment—and McManus lives through it to tell the tale. Overall, Garvey writes tightly and economically with hardly a wasted word, when so many other Vietnam books tend to sprawl. And at the end, he includes a poem which does creditable homage to Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses.”
A slightly different kind of Vietnam tale by a gifted writer.Pub Date: June 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5142-2815-9
Page Count: 146
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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