BOOK REVIEW: Like the Appearance of Horses by Andrew Krivak

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

Like the Appearance of Horses by Andrew Krivak is a complex but tightly focused multi-generational saga of war. As the third book in the Dardan Trilogy, it continues the narrative of the family of Jozef Vinich, an American-born transplant to Austria-Hungary who becomes a sharpshooter in WWI before eventually finding his way back to the U.S. to build a home in Dardan, Pennsylvania. The backstory is trickled into the current story, so that Like the Appearance of Horses works very well as a standalone novel. While jumping back and forth in time, this novel primarily focuses on the next two generations of men (in the Vinich family) going off to war – first WWII and then Vietnam. 

Jozef, now a patriarch, has a daughter, Hannah. She marries Becks (Bexhet), the boy who, as an infant during the war, was saved by Jozef, a story told in the previous book.

Becks goes off to war in turn. When he is separated from his company during the Battle of the Ardennes, he is rescued by Roma – his people – and guided back to where he hopes to find his grandfather. The journey is an epic in itself. And what comes of it is tragic.

Becks and Hannah have two sons. The eldest stays at home on the family farm while the younger, Sam, is forced to enlist in the army after an arrest. He is very good at soldiering, but that doesn’t prevent his capture, imprisonment, and torture. While he is MIA, his fiancee and brother back home fall in love and become engaged. When Sam finally returns home, addicted to heroin, he must make an epic journey of his own.

The saga wraps up in the next generation, when Sam’s son has gone off to war, not to return.

The writing is lush and dense. It is a moving story of how war damages not only the men who fight it, but all those who live within war-torn landscapes and all those left at home.

BOOK REVIEW: The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

Our book group’s next pick is The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai. It’s a multi-generational historical saga set in Vietnam from WWII thru the Vietnam war. The two protagonists are Huong and her grandmother, Tran Dieu Lan. During the course of the novel they live in and near Ha Noi, in North Vietnam. Huong is being cared for by her grandmother after her father went to war and then her mother went off to find her father. As Huong struggles with the horrors of living in a war zone and fearing for her family, her grandmother relates her own life story, which includes seeing her parents brutally murdered and her husband poisoned for his more liberal political beliefs. During the widespread “Land Reform,” her home is violently appropriated and she must flee with her five children and make a new start.

The novel is interesting in that it shows what life was like for the North Vietnamese: the violence, the famine, the political upheaval and displacement. Families were torn apart by war, poverty, and politics. As in all war stories, there are examples of kindness and extraordinary generosity interspersed with sadistic cruelty and greed. 

In one way, this book reminded me of Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about the Nigerian-Biafran War of the late 1960s. Both books use fiction to illustrate the nightmare of far-away wars that I didn’t (and still don’t) know enough about.

The book had a rather slow start, but became more interesting as I grew immersed in the grandmother’s story. It shows the enduring power of familial love, despite political dissent and warfare. I’m looking forward to our book group’s discussion.

BOOK REVIEW: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Our history/historical fiction book club is meeting soon and chose The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, an amazing book that I read in one sitting, wrenching me out of my reading slump.

The book is fiction, but written as an intertwining collection of short stories with a "memoir-like" feel to it, even though it jumps from one point of view to another. The primary narrator is a Vietnam veteran named Tim O’Brien, who has a squishy relationship to the author because it is fiction, not really memoir or autobiography. This gives the whole narrative a real but unreal tone, which meshes with the narrator’s ruminations on the telling of war stories and how-impossible- it-is-to-get-at-the-truth-but-it’s-all-true. It has an immediate feel, even when a character is looking back, and an honest feeling whether or not it’s true.

Each chapter is a story in itself, anecdotes about a company of soldiers in Vietnam. Reminiscent in a way of All Quiet on the Western Front, these are very young men who don’t really have a "big picture" view of the war, who are focused on personal survival and the survival of their buddies. It shows the awfulness of war: its tedium, terror, discomfort, dehumanization, guilt, and ongoing trauma, as well as the closeness of the interpersonal bonds and the giddiness that comes with surviving.

The writing is beautifully stark and evocative. The characters, though presented in snapshots, end up fully realized.

Even for those who don’t think they would be interested in Vietnam War fiction (I didn’t think I would be), this book is a should-read.