From Library Journal
Lieutenant Junior Grade Dubecheck is the lonely commander of the smallest riverine task force in Vietnam. Dubecheck's only skill is leading his men--he neither understands nor cares about the Navy, the Vietnamese, or the rest of life. We join him on a couple of missions, at rest in the Officers' Club, and tending to his seriously disturbed commanding officer. Dubecheck gets rest and relaxation in Hawaii, and in a fit of drunken exuberance, flies to Seattle. There he meets what passes for normal American society, which he finds no more comprehensible than the war. On his return he takes a congressman out on a faked combat patrol, with predictably bizarre results. The plot begins in midair and is left hanging, a good metaphor for Dubecheck's life and the war. Eyre has married Joseph Heller's Catch 22 ( LJ 11/1/61) to Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone (Delacorte, 1973) and the hallucinatory result works reasonably well. Recommended for subject collections.
-Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army TRALINET Ctr., Fort Monroe, Va.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army TRALINET Ctr., Fort Monroe, Va.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
