Outstanding, multifaceted collection of writings on Vietnam. Particularly welcome are the number of stories of the hitherto underrepresented women's experience of Vietnam. Daniell D`Ottavio Harned's rich, savagely beautiful ``Like Clouds Depart'' tells of a stewardess who flies R & R flights—her short affairs, an agonized visit to the hospital. ``Jody's Got Your Sister Too'' is Judy Kohler's razor-sharp first-person picture of a bighearted stateside nurse who looks reality dead in the eye; she's in love with her husband, having an affair with the sergeant running her ward, and is loved by her G.I patients. Also set stateside is Wayne Johnson's shivery ``Hippies, Indians, Buffalo.'' Martin receives a letter from his cousin a month after he was killed in Khe San: ``...don't let them talk you into coming over here. All we're doing is dying like pigs in this fucking muck.'' Shortly afterward, a draft notice arrives. The delayed casualties are here: In ``The Blue Lady,'' Ian Graham Leask renders the last thoughts of a man dying from exposure to Agent Orange, and Eileen Curtis's ``The Rhythm-Aires'' is a painfully acute portrait of a man still suffering the death of his son in Vietnam 20 years ago. Rick Christman contributes an agonizingly melancholy tale of a US translator who attempts to adopt a Vietnamese girl. Tim O'Brien's entry, ``The Man I Killed,'' is from his novel The Things They Carried. In ``The Hero,'' John Mort contributes a very strong story about a grunt so credulous he still believes war is a John Wayne movie. And Anthony Bokoski tells a compelling tale (``The Perimeter of Light'') of the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name in the trenches. A very fine collection of writings whether one is a Vietnam buff or not. (Ten photographs by Lance Woodruff.)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-89823-140-X
Page Count: 312
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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