Review by Booklist Review
Two fine new novels in the increasingly diverse and sophisticated genre of Vietnam War fiction."US" refers to the United States and to a handful of its rejects who, after the war, took up residence in the sex capital of the Orient, Bangkok; they are "stuck in a Twilight Zone curse of endless R. & R." The tale centers on one Loman, a benevolent pimp and nursemaid to such dwindled personalities as Helicopter Harry and Fat Al, not to mention bargirls like Sahn and the archetypal Kitty, sold out of the mysterious north country by their families desperate for cash. Loman, with his bar about to be closed down by a sadistic cop, takes money from a congressman to search out a strange, nearly mythical band of MIAs in that same wild north country near Laos. Karlin evokes the tone established by Robert Stone in Dog Soldiers; his Loman reminds you of Paul Theroux's St. Jack. The quest is purest Conrad. Nice stuff, with long, surrealist flights of prose juxtaposed with gritty dialogue, deadpan humor, and a downbeat story. No wonder Tim O'Brien likes it.The title of McAfee's first novel suggests the last pages of A Farewell to Arms, but his real model is Catch-22. What plot there is comes down to the narrator's murder of a woman and a child, and, years later, his inconsolable remorse as he sits on a beach and watches his small son play in the water. A terrible ache underlies this story, but even so, it's mostly an exercise in black humor. Here's an example: " . . . the helicopter flew on until it flew over the many little dots on the green screen. The explosion was deafening. Lights went out. Pilots went out. Xing loi, Sweet Chariot." Punning in Vietnamese is a great accomplishment, actually. McAfee was a Green Beret, and his humor may not be for everyone, but it's on the mark. ~--John Mort
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this grimly sardonic but strained and only episodically effective first novel about the Vietnam War by a decorated 'Nam veteran, an unnamed American Army captain narrates the story of an infantry unit based in a reconnaissance post near the Laotion border. Although he is nominally in command, the outfit is in effect led by a brutal sergeant called ``Shotgun,'' who serves as an all-purpose scout-sapper-killer. While McAfee invests heavily in irony, his approach could not be less subtle. He writes in a terse, telegraphic series of sentences and one-sentence paragraphs that are obviously intended to drive home any gruesome jokes or conclusions readers may have missed. Shotgun emerges as a cartoon figure in a savage story; the key enlisted men in the outfit, ``Quiet Voice'' and Spec. 7 Thompson, are puppets in his hands. The novel's key event is the arrival of Col. Basshorn, who orders the small unit on a mission into Laos, where the soldiers encounter Vietcong (although rarely), CIA operatives and drug smugglers as well as blood flukes and other repulsive creatures. McAfee furnishes some vivid description of the Mekong River and its tributaries, and his expository information about armaments is often interesting. Unfortunately, the story never emerges from the screen of nicknames that objectify the chief characters and the black humor that constitutes the book's chief tone. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A first novel, set at a Special Forces camp in the Laotian jungle, that tries to do for Vietnam what Vonnegut did for WW II, though McAfee's style--one-sentence paragraphs displayed ad nauseam--is merely choppy instead of stoic or absurdist. The narrator copes with the daily grind at ``A Camp'' alongside the likes of ``Shotgun,'' ``Black Spaghetti,'' ``Quiet Voice'' and ``Spec.7 Thompson.'' McAfee effectively evokes a sense of jungle rot--leeches, mildew, triple-canopy jungle and its tribulations--but the episodic structure is never quite fully shaped. Instead, we get pastiches, self-conscious allusions to other Vietnam literature, and instances that either describe the daily grind or try to establish a Wizard of Oz-like sense of absurdity. Shotgun, for instance, promises to kill Colonel Black, who's a compendium of everything that's wrong with the service, but the Colonel, shooting at Shotgun, manages to set off a mine and kill himself instead. Because such characters are cartoon-like rather than rounded, a reader is not sure whether to laugh or shrug at such cosmic justice. Dog turds in another instance are really ``personnel sensors''; such material is full of promise, but McAfee is unable to milk it in the way that a Vonnegut would have managed. Instead, a tepid heroin subplot involving (what else?) Air America, plus other scenes--ranging from lounging in the ``Teamhouse,'' a ``whorehouse-bar-laundry,'' to an attempt to carry the grievously wounded Spaghetti to safety--result in a string of absurdist moral questions (``Is the universe ruled by Bozo the clown?''). Purportedly autobiographical, but likely to be of interest only to hard-core Vietnam archivists. As fiction, it's well- meaning, occasionally original, but mostly derivative.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
