Showing posts with label veterans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label veterans. Show all posts
Nov 17, 2018
Sep 8, 2017
Jan 7, 2017
Jun 1, 2016
Dec 1, 2015
Canal bridge: a novel Ireland, love, and the First World War - Tom Phelan
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* From Phelan's effectively constructed and emotionally honest novel about Irish participation in WWI, the reader gains a new perspective on how the Great War decimated lives throughout Europe. Told in a chorus of alternating but harmonious voices, the narrative relates the story of two boyhood chums in rural Ireland who, in a monumental gesture to broaden their horizons, together join the British army (this is 1913, when Ireland was still part of the UK) and are eventually deployed to India. But before their troop ship can arrive there, the vessel is required to turn back. War has been declared in Europe, and the two boys are plunged full-tilt into the carnage as stretcher bearers. Battle scenes are graphically drawn but appropriately so. Phelan's intention is to accurately show the staggering waste of human life that the two friends observe, the memories of which keep the one friend who returns to Ireland at war's end from being mentally quite at home for some time. As is observed, "There are more ways of getting killed in a war than by bullets." Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
Check Availability
Jun 1, 2015
The harder they come - T.C. Boyle
Summary: Set in contemporary Northern California, The Harder They Come explores the volatile connections between three damaged people -- an aging ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran, his psychologically unstable son, and the son's paranoid, much older lover -- as they careen towards an explosive confrontation.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* T. C. Boyle's love and mastery of language are matched by a vehement imagination and a profound fascination with the glory and ruthlessness of nature and the paradoxes of humankind. How can a species be at once so brainy and so destructive? Boyle's virtuoso short stories fill 10 volumes, and he now has 15 novels to his name, some linked to controversial historical figures, such as Alfred Kinsey in The Inner Circle (2004) and Frank Lloyd Wright in The Women (2009). Boyle is equally inspired by the struggles of less-well-known individuals, such as the hardy few who attempted to settle California's Northern Channel Islands, the inspiration for When the Killing's Done (2011) and San Miguel (2012). The Harder They Come, Boyle's latest high-adrenaline tale of American individualism gone psychopathic, is pegged to the jaw-dropping story of the original mountain man, John Colter. Recruited by Lewis and Clark, Colter was an exceptional hunter, trapper, and scout. Believed to be the first white man to have seen the wonders of Yellowstone, he became legendary for his escape from a group of riled Blackfeet in Montana, who stripped him naked, let him go, then gave chase, intending to hunt him down. But Colter ran for his life through severe cold for some 300 miles and survived. In today's abused and pillaged wilds of California's Mendocino County, Adam, 25, worships Colter, and even takes his name. Prone to aberrant and violent behavior, Adam is in the grip of militant survivalist mania and raging, untreated schizophrenia. Camped out in the hills, he is growing his own medication, opium poppy. His parents are on a cruise. When they join a group onshore in Costa Rica, three armed men surround them and demand their valuables. While the others cower, his father, Sten, a Vietnam vet and retired high-school principal, becomes so enraged, he kills one of the bandits with his bare hands. Back in Mendocino, we meet another outlaw, one who does more harm to herself than to others. Sara is 40 or so, devoted to her dog, and supporting herself as a substitute teacher and a farrier, tending to the hoofs of the region's horses and, in a private nature preserve for endangered African wildlife, zebras and antelopes. Sara is also a fine gardener, a darn good cook, and a rabid member of the so-called sovereign citizen movement, which considers the U.S. government illegitimate. Recklessly rebellious, Sara picks up Adam when he's hitchhiking and seduces him. There is no doubt that renegades Adam, Sara, and Sten are racing toward a conflagration. As the body count and public hysteria rise, an enormous manhunt is launched. Riffing on actual events, Boyle intensifies both suspense and provocation as he delves into the question of violence as an inherited malady not only within a family but throughout American society. He further widens the frame to take in the terror and environmental havoc wrought by illegal drug operations on state and federal land, the hate and hysteria aimed at undocumented immigrants, and the collision between mental instability and violent anti-government extremism. Boyle's illumination of minds in the grip and whirl of overwhelming fear, fury, and madness as well as stubborn and courageous love blazes in its specificity and empathy. Then there's this seizing view of nature channeled through Adam's poisoned senses: "So what he did was wait while everything alive spoke to him from the deep grass and the bushes and the hollows in the dirt. . . . They were saying Make War, Not Love. Because they were at war down there, too, war that began the minute they hatched from their eggs . . . eat or be eaten and then go ahead and sing about it." And what might they sing? Boyle's title leads us to reggae star Jimmy Cliff's indelible lyrics: Well, the oppressors are trying to keep me down Trying to drive me underground And they think that they have got the battle won I say forgive them Lord, they know not what they've done 'Cause, as sure as the sun will shine I'm gonna get my share now, what's mine And then the harder they come The harder they fall, one and all. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Boyle taps into urgent national questions in a novel primed to make literary headlines as he tours the country in sync with a substantial publicity campaign. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
Check Availability
Sep 1, 2013
What it's like to go to war - Karl Marlantes
Summary: War is as old as humankind, but in the past, warriors were prepared for battle by ritual, religion and literature, which also helped bring them home. In this narrative, the author weaves accounts of his combat experiences with thoughtful analysis, self-examination, and his readings from Homer to the Mahabharata to Jung. He talks frankly about how he is haunted by the face of the young North Vietnamese soldier he killed at close quarters and how he finally finds a way to make peace with his past. He discusses the daily contradictions that warriors face in the grind of war, where each battle requires them to take life or spare life, and where they enter a state he likens to the fervor of religious ecstasy. He also underscores the need for returning veterans to be counseled properly.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* A Rhodes scholar who served as a marine lieutenant in Vietnam (he left Oxford to return to active duty), Marlantes seems to exemplify what we want in our military officers. Thoughtful and articulate, he is a student of history and philosophy; he recognizes the need for armies but believes nations should undertake more soul-searching before going to war. Above all, he feels that we need to do a better job preparing soldiers (he prefers the au courant "warriors") for war and also helping them heal, physically and mentally, from war. He interleaves harrowing scenes from his own experiences in combat with the lessons he learned and his hopes for their broader application. While his often Jungian perspective may strike some readers as idiosyncratic or hard to implement, his empathy is apparent, his emotions are affecting, and his goals are admirable. Both a training manual for would-be warriors and a caution to the politicians who would deploy them, this is also essential reading for civilians who seek to better understand the complicated costs of military action. By turns horrifying and soothing, visceral and deeply profound, it's a book you'll never forget—whether you agree with it or not. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
Check Availability
The things they carried - Tim O'Brien
Summary: An anniversary edition of a collection of interconnected fictional stories follows the members of an American platoon fighting in the Vietnam War, in a book that mirrors the author's own wartime experiences. This finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award has been banned for profanity and other strong language. - (Baker & Taylor)
BookList Review
"In the end. . .a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen." In Tim O'Brien's world, of course, a war story is all that--and more. The author of the National Book Award-winning Going After Cacciato offers us fiction in a unique form: a kind of "faction" presented as a collection of related stories that have the cumulative effect of a unified novel. The "things they carry"--literally--are prosaic things: amphetamines, M-16s, grenades, good-luck charms, Sterno cans, toilet paper, photographs, C-rations. But the men in O'Brien's platoon--Curt Lemon, Rat Kiley, Henry Dobbins, Kiowa, and the rest--also carry less tangible but more palpable things such as disease, confusion, hatred, love, regret, fear, what passes for courage; in short, the prototypical psychological profile of the youthful Vietnam vet. There are 22 pieces here in all, some of which were previously published in such diverse literary arenas as Playboy, Granta, GQ, and Esquire. The prose ranges from staccato soldierly thoughts to raw depictions of violent death to intense personal ruminations by the author that don't appear to be fictional at all. ("On the Rainy River," O'Brien's account of the time he almost fled to Canada after receiving his draft notice, is particularly moving.) Just when you thought there was nothing left to say about the Vietnam experience. . .there's plenty. ((Reviewed March 15, 1990)) -- Martin Brady
Check Availability
Jul 1, 2013
The things they carried - Tim O'Brien
Summary: An anniversary edition of a collection of interconnected fictional stories follows the members of an American platoon fighting in the Vietnam War, in a book that mirrors the author's own wartime experiences. This finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award has been banned for profanity and other strong language. - (Baker & Taylor)
BookList Review
"In the end. . .a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen." In Tim O'Brien's world, of course, a war story is all that--and more. The author of the National Book Award-winning Going After Cacciato offers us fiction in a unique form: a kind of "faction" presented as a collection of related stories that have the cumulative effect of a unified novel. The "things they carry"--literally--are prosaic things: amphetamines, M-16s, grenades, good-luck charms, Sterno cans, toilet paper, photographs, C-rations. But the men in O'Brien's platoon--Curt Lemon, Rat Kiley, Henry Dobbins, Kiowa, and the rest--also carry less tangible but more palpable things such as disease, confusion, hatred, love, regret, fear, what passes for courage; in short, the prototypical psychological profile of the youthful Vietnam vet. There are 22 pieces here in all, some of which were previously published in such diverse literary arenas as Playboy, Granta, GQ, and Esquire. The prose ranges from staccato soldierly thoughts to raw depictions of violent death to intense personal ruminations by the author that don't appear to be fictional at all. ("On the Rainy River," O'Brien's account of the time he almost fled to Canada after receiving his draft notice, is particularly moving.) Just when you thought there was nothing left to say about the Vietnam experience. . .there's plenty. ((Reviewed March 15, 1990)) -- Martin Brady
Check Availability
Feb 1, 2013
Billy Lynn's long half time walk - Ben Fountain
Summary: A satire set in Texas during America's war in Iraq that explores the gaping national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad. Follows the surviving members of the heroic Bravo Squad through one exhausting stop in their media-intensive "Victory Tour" at Texas Stadium, football mecca of the Dallas Cowboys, their fans, promoters, and cheerleaders.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Written in a voice that is at once hopeful, cautious, naive, profoundly wise, and completely lost yet utterly knowing, Fountain's most recent work of fiction delivers a brilliant, powerful examination of how modern warfare affects soldiers back at home. Billy Lynn is 19 and already a war hero after footage of a fierce battle between his squad and Iraqi insurgents went viral. Briefly back from Iraq on a "victory tour" through the states, the young Silver Star winner lives an entire lifetime over the course of one day, Thanksgiving, while he and his more worldly Bravo Squad members are feted by a deliriously grateful and mostly misunderstanding public. Attending a Dallas Cowboys game, Billy Lynn and Bravo Squad must juggle the possibility of endless love with cheerleaders, Hollywood producers seeking to make a movie about them, football players morbidly curious about what it's like to kill another human being, and all the conflicting emotions, thoughts, and actions each of them experiences while back in the land of sports mania, mass consumerism, and coveted yet fleeting fame before they return to the war itself. Billy's journey carries the reader along with its richly detailed, pitch-perfect language and characterizations, leaving an indelible impression. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
Check Availability
Jul 1, 2012
Home - Toni Morrison
Summary: "The story of a Korean war veteran on a quest to save his younger sister"-- Provided by publisher.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* The Korean conflict is over, and soldier Frank Money has returned to the States with a disturbed psyche that sends him beyond anger into actually acting out his rage. From the mental ward in which he has been incarcerated for an incident he can't even remember, he determines that he must escape. He needs to get to Atlanta to attend to his gravely ill sister and take her back to their Georgia hometown of Lotus, which, although Frank realizes a return there is necessary for his sister's sake, remains a detestable place in his mind. Morrison's taut, lacerating novel observes, through the struggles of Frank to move heaven and earth to reach and save his little sister, how a damaged man can gather the fortitude to clear his mind of war's horror and face his own part in that horror, leave the long-term anger he feels toward his hometown aside, and take responsibility for his own life as well as hers. With the economical presentation of a short story, the rhythms and cadence of a poem, and the total embrace and resonance of a novel, Morrison, one of our national literary treasures, continues to marshal her considerable talents to draw a deeply moving narrative and draw in a wide range of appreciative readers. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A quarter-million print run is the surest indication that the publisher is confident that a new Morrison novel is bound to be a big hit. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
Check Availability
Feb 1, 2011
Mudbound: a novel - Hillary Jordan
Summary: In 1946, Laura McAllan tries to adjust after moving with her husband and two children to an isolated cotton farm in the Mississipi Delta. - (Baker & Taylor)
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* "When I think of the farm, I think of mud," says Laura, the main character in this sophisticated, complex first novel. Jordan sets her narrative in the rural Mississippi Delta in the immediate post–World War II period. Thematically, the novel charts the evolution of a wifely role—the evolution of Laura's new life—when she marries at a relatively late age and moves from her comfortable existence in Memphis (her father was a professor and she an English teacher in a private school) to a rough Delta farm when her new husband decides to forgo his engineering profession to live out his dream of cultivating the soil. The narrative is told in alternating first-person accounts (each voice rendered distinctive and authentic to the character), as Laura, her plain and steady husband, her dashing brother-in-law, and other individuals now significant in Laura's new life (one of whom is the returned GI-son of their black tenant farmer) tell their sides of the devolving events in Laura and her husband's move to this remote and rigid environment. In addition to the material deprivation Laura must endure, racism in the area is full-blown and horrible, most apparent in the face of her father-in-law, who has come to live with Laura and her husband. When her brother-in-law returns from his postwar wanderings about Europe, at first he brings a bright, new light to shine on Laura. She falls in love with him, but, ultimately, the light illuminates only ugliness. Copyright 2007 Booklist Reviews.
Check Availability
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)