A sharp and intriguing tale about a gay draftee in the ’60s.
A novel tells the story of a gay Army recruit in the Vietnam era.
In 1967, Tim Halladay has just graduated from college when he gets his draft notice in the mail. His request for a deferment to attend the Yale School of Drama is denied, and he refuses to employ his only other out—the fact that he’s gay. Even straight men are “checking the box” to avoid military service, but Halladay refuses to do the same even if he can’t explain why: “For what? To prove something…that I was as good as the next guy…I would never ‘check the box’ to get out of serving in the military.” The war in Vietnam means this decision may cost him his life, but he nevertheless reports to the Army Training Center at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. From the beginning he is derided as a rich kid and college boy by his fellow recruits, none of whom seem any more pleased to be there than he is. Despite their differences, friendships are formed, and through the rigors of basic training, Halladay experiences a camaraderie that is both alien and comforting. He works to make a place for himself in the military hierarchy, but he can only keep his identity hidden for so long. It may not be Vietnam that brings him down but rather his own sexual past. Narrated by Halladay in the first person, Baker’s (Paperwhite Narcissus, 2014, etc.) prose is fluid and full of personality, packed with humor and astute observations about the soldier’s world and the characters who inhabit it. His treatment of the culture of the Army is particularly entertaining, full of nicknames, machismo, and physicality that take on added meaning given the protagonist’s hidden orientation. This is not a tale about war; Halladay never makes it that far. Rather, this is a story about the military at home: the manner in which it forces people into its structures and the ways in which it is and isn’t a microcosm of society. Halladay makes for an adept and compelling guide through this environment.
A sharp and intriguing tale about a gay draftee in the ’60s.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59021-672-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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