Written by a man who spent 15 years flying Tomcats, and who has also served as a consultant on such films as The Hunt for...
A rousing debut tale about the jet-flying set in which heroism, high-tech expertise, and a warts-and-all look at the Navy get equal measure.
It’s that uneasy period post–Desert Storm—the US (under the UN banner) and Iraq continuing to view each other gimlet-eyed. Lieutenant Rick Reichert (“Punk” affectionately), an F-14 Tomcat pilot, is stationed in the northern Arabian Gulf, on the three-billion-dollar carrier Arrowslinger—“The Boat” in Navy parlance. And he’s disenchanted. He hates being separated from the woman he loves, particularly since he’s begun to sense that her willingness to play Penelope to his Ulysses is on the wane, distance taking its toll. Also, he distrusts and despises his Queeg-like skipper, Commander “Soup” Campbell, whose ambition is boundless and whose path to promotion is littered with the outmaneuvered, the exploited, and the more deserving. What Punk loves is the flying, and the fliers—the good people in his squadron—though embarrassing words to that effect would never cross his 25-year-old lips. After months of unproductive wariness and enervating stalemate, there’s suddenly an incident. Iraqi jets are in the sky, in the no-fly zone, and Punk and his squadron-mates are ordered to confront them. Sensing an opportunity for glory—the kind of grandstanding he’s become famous for—Commander Campbell preempts one of the junior pilots, disrupting the orderliness and efficiency of the mission. Once aloft, he quickly compounds his ineptitude, crashing his plane and almost causing the death of the RIO (radio intercept officer) flying with him. Punk, on the other hand, performs valiantly, but in one of those painful ironies that Carroll clearly regrets and just as clearly appreciates, Campbell’s career turns out to be disaster-proof.
Written by a man who spent 15 years flying Tomcats, and who has also served as a consultant on such films as The Hunt for Red October: a convincing, often amusing, surprisingly unflinching account of those who go up in the air in ships.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-55750-236-6
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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