It's hard not to be of two more or less uneasy minds about this ambitious book. O'Brien (If I Die In A War Zone, Northern Lights) has come directly to his subject—Vietnam—with great formal care and deep knowledge, and yet at least half the time it feels as if he's traveling in someone else's boots. In a fugue of fantasy chapters interspersed with astringently realistic flashbacks, Specialist Fourth Class Paul Berlin endures the life of a foot-soldier in Quang Ngai province; when a grunt named Cacciato—"dumb as a bullet"—one day picks up and sets off through the jungle, destination Paris, Berlin's patrol is sent after him. Fantasy takes over as, through Laos, India, Iran, Greece, and finally Paris, a dream of "possibility" and peace develops that could not be in greater contrast to the hell (in flashbacks) of normal war: the fragging of a by-the-book lieutenant, a medic feeding a dying soldier M&Ms and calling them "pills," desperate basketball games in the jungle. The revulsion, pity, and sheer documentary vividness O'Brien can draw from his real-Vietnam material is truly remarkable. But the fantasy journey and the Cacciato metaphor lack parallel strength: "The real issue was the power of the will to defeat fear. . . . Somehow working his way into that secret chamber of the human heart, where, in tangles, lay the circuitry for all that was possible, the full range of what a man might be." Such fustian/imitation-Hemingway tendencies rub up against balloony characters like a young Vietnamese refugee girl who accompanies the Quixote-like patrol on its mission to Paris and who seems more like an obligation to story than a deeply felt personality. "Where was the fulcrum? Where did it tilt from fact to imagination? How far had Cacciato led them?" Paul Berlin wonders—and so do we as we follow O'Brien through what's too often a large shell that unfairly shadows writing and intelligence of the highest order and honesty.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1977
ISBN: 0767904427
Page Count: 347
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1977
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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