Part history lesson, part coming-of-age story, this Vietnam-era tale delivers the kind of stirring details that can only...
The Summer of Love and the Vietnam War greatly affect several Pittsburgh-area baby boomers in this novel.
The lives of the young people of Milltowne, Pennsylvania, at the dawn of the 1960s are full of personal tussles, political and class affiliations, and one desperate desire for a nose job. Jenny Abruzzi is nicknamed “Honker,” but the family seeks approval from the parish priest before a nose job can be arranged. Art McGill, a young Richard Nixon fan, has his mind on the Pirates and their trip to the World Series. Due to some serendipitous seating arrangements, Jenny and her new nose are seated near McGill at a fateful World Series game that gives them a lasting connection. Redheaded Democrat Mike Mulligan has recently found himself, along with McGill, on the receiving end of “Whackin’ McCracken’s” paddle at school after the two were caught betting on the presidential election. As the years go by, college senior McGill watches from his fraternity house as President Nixon’s televised lottery for Vietnam War draft numbers is shown. Pre-emptively, McGill enlists, landing a stateside assignment as an MP. Jenny has come back into the picture, and she and McGill are together. His interest in the burgeoning anti-war movement lands him in trouble, and he is shipped off to Vietnam despite a contract assurance against it. With Mulligan in country as well, McGill is sent to the remote Dam Luc compound, where one year of warfare puts him and Mulligan in the greatest of peril. Morrison’s (The Energy Caper, 2008) new book deftly records the sights and sounds of ’60s and ’70s America and Vietnam through music, dialogue, and personal relationships that highlight the lofty aspirations, struggles, and upward mobility of the baby boomers. The sections in Vietnam, in particular, come alive with rich detail about the conflict and the sway and swagger of reluctant troops who rely on music, weed, and low-powered beer to get them through. This is a long book, and some parts of it meander too much, especially McGill’s postwar period in the early ’70s. But Morrison’s impressive amount of knowledge about the time period offers some fresh perspectives on these much-discussed years.
Part history lesson, part coming-of-age story, this Vietnam-era tale delivers the kind of stirring details that can only come from personal experience.Pub Date: June 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-929150-30-7
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Castalia Communications
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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