24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not a book about war.........., October 13, 2008
Ivan Doig has written a book that takes place during World War II, but this book is not ABOUT the war. Instead, he has written a touching, sometimes wrenching chronicle of one man's quest to 'beat the odds'. Although this novel takes place over two years during a terrible time in history, it is not a historical account of the war. It is the story of one man's search for his purpose in life, always viewed through the lens of what might happen to that life if the odds don't go his way. I loved this book, and did not want to turn the last page. Every one of Mr. Doig's books has deeply touched my heart, and this one is no different. If you know Mr. Doig's works, you know what I mean.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable but doesn't penetrated deeply, September 10, 2009
This review is from: The Eleventh Man (Paperback)
Ben, the hero of this World War II drama, was a member of a Montana college football team that went undefeated in 1941. Because his father is a small town newspaper editor, he is plucked from pilot training to become a military reporter at the service of a shadowy but all-powerful propaganda outfit. His assignment is to write profiles in courage of all the other team members, now fighting the war in different theaters.
Ben also falls in love with Cass, the hard-bitten female pilot who is helping fly planes from Montana to Alaska where they can be handed over to the Russian air force. Trouble is, Cass is married and her husband is busy somewhere in the Pacific fighting the Japanese.
The premise and set-up for this book are promising and the leading characters are engaging. One quickly starts rooting for Ben and Cass, who grab precious moments away from their assignments for energetic coupling. These scenes have a gritty "film noir" character that is very compelling.
(SPOILER ALERT) As Ben pursues his assignment, his teammates are afflicted by terrible luck. One by one, they start dying, even the ones with apparently safe assignments. We learn that at the heart of the winning season lay an awful secret. Is the dream team cursed?
It is completely unrealistic that the military would proceed with Ben's dumbass assignment once the deathtoll starts climbing. It would have been a morale-buster on the homefront. And Ben's smarty-pants correspondence through telex messages with his superiors started to with this reader cloy pretty quickly.
My biggest criticism of this book is that it doesn't bring us enough of the terror and also the exhilaration of war. My father was in World War II (see
Guarded By Angels: How My Father And Uncle Survived Hitler And Cheated Stalin my memoir of his experiences.) The war scenes in this book don't feel real to me. Neither is Ben's grief convincing at the death of his teammates. The only one we really get to know is Jake, yet his death happens offstage and is tossed off as an afterthought. Ben is full of feeling for Cass -- yet is soul is full of emptiness for his football buddies.
It feels false, as if the author did not go deep enough. This book works well as a love story but falls short as a war story.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Expressive View of War and Real People, November 30, 2009
A relatively brief book by contemporary standards, "The Eleventh Man" is muscular, yet trim and solid as a Montana ranch-hand; as thoughtful and wise as an old newspaper editor. A skilled craftsman, writer Ivan Doig has used minimal space to create dozens of memorable characters and to weave more than a dozen individual stories into a novel that was even better with a second reading.
Not one to theorize nor to waste time on gratuitous action, Doig writes about the real world and its unexpected adventures. Many of his earlier works have dealt with pioneer lives and hardships, as the western territories were settled by dedicated, risk-taking seekers of new lives. They have dealt with brutal forces of nature. "The Eleventh Man" deals with many of those forces, as they took place in the 1940's, pressurized and traumatized by World War II, adding the thoughtless violence of war as it affects individuals and their highly believable lives. He puts names and faces on heroic characters, who suffer unheroic deaths in a cause that has been often been distorted and idealized. And he recognizes the many unkind and petty things that people do.
With his hero, former Montana football player Ben Reinking, his heroine, wise and lively aviator Cass Standish, Doig lovingly expresses his fascination with people and with human situations. Throughout, he expresses his love love of nature and its enormity. How wonderful to find a writer who sees and hears the fundamental things that enrich our lives, and who expresses them so well.
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