Charlie and the Children is a novel about an American soldier who goes to war, fathers a son, and abandons him. He is taken captive by the Viet Cong and held in a cave in a tunnel underground. Sick, starving, and alone, he grdually loses his grip on reality and becomes convinced that one of his captors is his lost son. In clear, lyrical prose, Joanna C Scott has written a book that is at the same time mythic and believable. Although a number of fine Vietnam war novels have been published, Charlie and the Children is unique in its concern and its surpassing quality.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews
A Vietnam novel that was inspired by Scott's nonfiction compilation, Indochina's Refugees: Oral Histories from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam (1989, not reviewed). While living in the Philippines, Scott interviewed an Amerasian boy, and was so moved by his story that she imagined the life of the father who had abandoned him in Vietnam. Charlie Lucas is a grunt who is marking off his days near Cam Ranh Bay, trying to avoid booby-traps, fighting the Viet Cong when he must (Scott has the speech and attitudes, and the dynamics among Charlie's fellow soldiers, down precisely). Charlie dreams of the upper-class Georgetown woman, Pauline, he met shortly before being drafted, who married him out of pity but remains loyal, writing regularly of her accomplishments in school. Then he meets a Vietnamese woman, Minh, and fathers a son. Mentally walling out his marriage to Pauline, Charlie marries Minh, and then all hell breaks loose: Booby-traps decimate Charlie's platoon, and Charlie is captured by the VC. They're only children themselves, but they hold their prisoner captive deep underground, in a small dark cage. Fed only rice balls and boiled rats, Charliel begins to weaken physically. In isolation, he looks back over his life clearly at first, but then begins to sink into fantasies. In a poetic but brilliantly clear style, Scott moves seamlessly between Charlie's physical pain and his visions, until finally, as he nears death, Charlie seems to fly above the earth and visualize the fall of South Vietnam and the terrible plight of the boat people. At last one of his captors, a child to whom Charlie attempts to teach English and whom he confuses with his true son, takes pity on Charlie and delivers him to American soldiers. A beautiful story, indebted both to Larry Brown's Dirty Work and Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato, but with a gentleness and compassion all its own. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"...a testimonial to the horrors of war anywhere - and in Vietnam in particular..." -- Baltimore Sun
"A beautiful story...but with a gentleness and compassion all its own." -- Kirkus Reviews
'Riveting...a heart stopper...yet more than just another story about war." -- Lieutenant General Lavern E. Weber
"A beautiful story...but with a gentleness and compassion all its own." -- Kirkus Reviews
'Riveting...a heart stopper...yet more than just another story about war." -- Lieutenant General Lavern E. Weber
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More About the Author
Joanna Catherine Scott (1943--) was born in England during an air raid over London, raised in Australia by a rabidly religious mother and a phlegmatic engineer father, married way too young, divorced, fell in love again and came with her American husband to live in the US where, aside from a couple of years in the Philippines, she has lived below the Mason Dixon line ever since. Her five novels and oral history collection have all been based on true life stories, giving voice to the voiceless. Her poetry tells stories too. She has six children, three Australian and three adopted Korean, as well as a young man whom she met while he was on death row whom she regards as her seventh child. A Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, she is a graduate of Adelaide and Duke Universities and lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her website is www.joannacatherinescott.com.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
V V A Veteran BOOK OF THE MONTH (Aug/Sept '97),
By A Customer
This review is from: Charlie and the Children (Hardcover)
THE CHILDREN WE FOUGHT(reviewer Stan Sirmans) How many Vietnam Veterans saw dead or captured Vietcong and thought they were just children? Many of them were. In her insightful and beautifully written first novel, Charlie and the Children, (Black Heron Press, 235 pp., $22.95), Joanna C. Scott has captured the essence of an enemy a French general referred to with disdain as "these little people." She has also portrayed the physical and mental deterioration of an American captive of the Vietcong. During the 1980's, on the Bataan Peninsula, refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were infused with hope as they waited acceptance by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for an American visa. It was in these camps that Scott interviewed many refugees and published their stories in Indochina's Refugee: Oral Histories from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam (McFarland, 1989). Touched by the account of an Amerasian teenager abandoned by his U.S. Navy officer father, Scott conceived the story of Charlie. Drafted soon after he is married, Charlie Lucas arrives in Vietnam and is befriended by a second-tour veteran who teaches him how to survive. One afternoon, as Charlie and his new friend sit drinking at a sidewalk cafe, an enemy grenade explodes. Charlie rescues a young woman named Minh from the rush of the crowd and promptly falls in love with her. Although he continues to write home faithfully to his wife, Charlie marries Minh, and soon a son is born.Torn by love for his wife in the States and for Minh and his son, Charlie begins to feel trapped in a hopeless situation. He channels his emotional distress into merciless assaults against the enemy. While on patrol, his platoon is wiped out, and Charlie is captured by children in black pajamas. His captors march him deep into the jungle and place him in a dark hole inside one of their tunnels. Left alone and fed little, Charlie's body and mind deteriorate. His world becomes a series of hallucinations as he descends into despair and death approaches. The singing lilt of Scott's clear narrative reflects her background as an accomplished poet. She has peppered the story with metaphors and similes that are stunning. A medevac helicopter, carrying one of Charlie's dead platoon-mates, for example, goes ^Qsobbing its way across the treetops.' Her meticulous research is reflected in the conversations of her soldiers. They talk the language of the war. The combat scenes, too, ring true. Unlike other authors with no military background who attempt to write about war, Scott is believable. She doesn't stumble. She has crafted an unusually graceful war story that depicts the experiences of young soldiers in Vietnam. It is a prodigious feat for a writer who is not a Vietnam War veteran, and it is a reflection of her enormous talent.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE STAR DEMOCRAT (Reviewer: John Goodspeed) 8/22/97,
By A Customer
This review is from: Charlie and the Children (Hardcover)
Joanna C. Scott was born in London during an air raid, was raised in Australia, is a widely published poet and author of a book about refugees in Indochina, and now lives in Hunt Valley, Baltimore County, with six children - all or part (or none) of which may explain her powerful descriptions of pain and injury and suffering in her new (and second) novel, a tale of the Vietnam War, Charlie and the Children. The protagonist is a young Texan, Charlie Lucas, who is drafted into the Army infantry after graduating from law school in D.C. and marrying the sophisticated daughter of a U.S. [sic] diplomat. In Vietnam he kills a lot of "dinks" (or "gooks") and cuts off their ears. He also marries one and has a son by her - without informing either wife of the other. Then, while out on a search-and-destroy mission, every soldier in his squad except Charlie is blown to bits by a booby trap, and he's captured by two Viet Cong "children" - as he perceives them - and imprisoned alone in a narrow tunnel. He also thinks of his captors as VCs or "Victor Charlie," which is sort of hideously ironic (since his own first name, remember, is Charlie).
In the tunnel, apparently for a long time, Charlie is tormented by fear of torture, chiggers, an injured toe, rotten food, primitive hygienic facilities, flashbacks of a dead buddy's recitation of distractingly pornographic letters from home, thoughts of his American wife, hallucinations about his Vietnamese wife and son and - almost as nauseating to the reader as to the prisoner - a constant stink of blood, guts, sweat, tears, human waste, cordite, wet fungi, etc. Scott is especially good at describing odors.
Charlie and the Children is a strong novel, very strong, probably too strong for the squeamish.THE STAR Democrat
by John Goodspeed
Friday, August 1997
Joanna C. Scott was born in London during an air raid, was raised in Australia, is a widely published poet and author of a book about refugees in Indochina, and now lives in Hunt Valley, Baltimore County, with six children - all or part (or none) of which may explain her powerful descriptions of pain and injury and suffering in her new (and second) novel, a tale of the Vietnam War, Charlie and the Children.
The protagonist is a young Texan, Charlie Lucas, who is drafted into the Army infantry after graduating from law school in D.C. and marrying the sophisticated daughter of a U.S. [sic] diplomat. In Vietnam he kills a lot of "dinks" (or "gooks") and cuts off their ears. He also marries one and has a son by her - without informing either wife of the other.
Then, while out on a search-and-destroy mission, every soldier in his squad except Charlie is blown to bits by a booby trap, and he's captured by two Viet Cong "children" - as he perceives them - and imprisoned alone in a narrow tunnel. He also thinks of his captors as VCs or "Victor Charlie," which is sort of hideously ironic (since his own first name, remember, is Charlie). In the tunnel, apparently for a long time, Charlie is tormented by fear of torture, chiggers, an injured toe, rotten food, primitive hygienic facilities, flashbacks of a dead buddy's recitation of distractingly pornographic letters from home, thoughts of his American wife, hallucinations about his Vietnamese wife and son and - almost as nauseating to the reader as to the prisoner - a constant stink of blood, guts, sweat, tears, human waste, cordite, wet fungi, etc. Scott is especially good at describing odors. Charlie and the Children is a strong novel, very strong, probably too strong for the squeamish.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A heart stopper,
By A Customer
This review is from: Charlie and the Children (Hardcover)
Riveting . . . a heartstopper . . . yet more than just another story about war. In taking on the issue of the children soldiers leave behind, `Charlie and the Children' transforms itself into a fable for our time. I was astonished to find myself in tears
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