Customer Reviews

Fatal Light

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Richard Currey's Fatal Light is captivating and enlightening. I could not stop reading the book once I started. I found myself drawn into the life and experiences of the narrator--most likely based on the author's experiences as a marine in Vietnam. Currey writes his impressions personally and vividly. His stream of consciousness starts with life as a boy, and alternates impressions and experiences in the warring Vietnam jungle with the more peaceful times with the girl he left behind. Some readers may, at first, find the time period switches uncomfortable. However, if the reader allows him/herself to get into the mind-set of this young soldier, it will be clear as to why he presents his story this way. Life in this war was anything but straightforward. The time period switches show us how the narrator coped. He had to remember home and better times in order to have the energy and desire to stay alive in the war. Richard Currey shows us through the eyes of his narrator how it feels to go from mid-America small-town life as an adolescent to the savagery of war and back. The narrator changes in the process, and so do we, as we vicariously experience and come through the reality and horror of war--but also, it seems, with almost first-hand knowledge.

This book, the 20th anniversary edition of Fatal Light by Richard Currey, is an account of a transition from boyhood to war and then home again. Yet, although many books about war follow similar paths, Currey declines to focus on narrative. Rather, he evokes emotions and feelings in tiny snapshots of one participant's life during the Vietnam War. The result is a dream-like book, where episodes of the narrator's boyhood, his time on the battlefield, on leave in Saigon and on his first few days back home are told in the same style as his recounting of malarial delirium. If the result is a portrait of one man's experience of the war, Currey wields his brush sparingly, but each line is precisely placed.

Less concerned with narrative than with tone, Currey sometimes allows the reader to be confused. The reader may have some difficulty knowing which tales might be referred to later on, and which will merely fade away. Yet, I can't help but consider this a stylistic device, rather than a flaw. The disjointed narrative conveys the confusion the narrator feels throughout his time in the war and immediately after.

The prose is beautiful, even if the subject is ugly. I highly recommend this book.

Simply the best book on the Vietnam War experience i have ever read. i was unable to put it down, even when i was so angry i wanted to throw it across the room, or when i was crying my eyes out. this book touched me in a way none other has. simply a must-read.

It's easy to see why this book won the Hemingway award, with it's swift, clean storyline that lays out the atrocities and realities of war before the reader like a bloody knee the eight year old shows his friends. It is one man's experience of the war, one man who returned like all the others, different. A must read for those who look for reality in literature. It doesn't get any grittier than this.

Richard Currey is a phenomenal writer. He has a unique ability to create terrifying, beautiful, and unforgettable images with only a few words.

Fatal Light followed the story of a seemingly unremarkable Midwestern boy who had a most likely unremarkable future until he was drafted for Vietnam. Right before leaving for the war, the main character meets a woman, Mary, and falls in love. He proposes to her before leaving the country, but she hesitates to accept his offer since she did not want to worry that he has died or wait indefinitely for his return.

The main character, who I do not recall is even given a name, heads off for Vietnam as a medic. While in Vietnam he faces death both in combat and by contracting malaria. His dreams of Mary and their future lives together help keep him alive. He returns to the United States as a changed man with difficulty facing the future and reconciling his life as a soldier with that as an ordinary American.

Fatal Light is not a book about war but rather a book about the human mind. It follows a seemingly ordinary man's existence in a war for which the man can find no purpose. A war where the enemy can be a seemingly innocent civilian by day but an enemy soldier at night. While the book used the Vietnam War for its backdrop, the stage could have been inter-changed for any other seemingly pointless war.

Dr. Currey skillfully portrayed the inner-thoughts of the soldiers during Vietnam. Through few words, he describes the reflections of the main character as he waits for the opposition forces to strike, as he watches a follow soldier die, as he hallucinates during malarial fevers, and as he copes with deaths of seemingly innocent civilians. The book culminates in the last section where we see the difficulty the previously ordinary man has in integrating back into a society that hadn't changed even though he had lived through events that can only be described as extraordinary.

Needless to say, I highly recommend this book.

Richard Currey's novel The Fatal Light gives an incredibly realistic view of the Vietnam War. Although gut-wrenching at times, the novel is quite intriguing and interesting.

I originally just got this book because it was thin and about war for my English assignment. 2 chapters into it I was hooked and it is one of the best war stories I have ever read! Coming from a 16 year old, I think this book is a must read!