Homefront [Paperback]

Tony Christini (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 20, 2006

Years into the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, where is the flood of anti-war novels that a decent society would produce? Where is the novelistic exposure of religious and academic, corporate and governmental forces that have built and maintained support for an invasion and occupation that has been judged to be illegal by the head of the United Nations and legal experts across America and the globe, and has had the predicted effect of increasing the likelihood of attack against America, and was based on fraud as known in advance, and meanwhile has killed thousands of American troops, and has wounded or debilitated tens of thousands of others, and has killed upwards of 100,000 Iraqis and maimed countless others while destroying their country? Where are the didactic novels, the social protest novels? Where are the lifesaving "muckraking" novels? Where are the thesis novels, the polemic fictions, the novels with a purpose? Or even the realistic novels, the info novels, the governmental novels on the scandalous nature of the ongoing American aggression in Iraq? In Homefront, an American family confronts the reality of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Years into the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, where is the flood of anti-war novels that a decent society would produce? Where is the novelistic exposure of religious and academic, corporate and governmental forces that have built and maintained support for an invasion and occupation that has been judged to be illegal by the head of the United Nations and legal experts across America and the globe, and has had the predicted effect of increasing the likelihood of attack against America, and was based on fraud as known in advance, and meanwhile has killed thousands of American troops, and has wounded or debilitated tens of thousands of others, and has killed upwards of 100,000 Iraqis and maimed countless others while destroying their country? Where are the didactic novels, the social protest novels? Where are the lifesaving "muckraking" novels? Where are the thesis novels, the polemic fictions, the novels with a purpose? Or even the realistic novels, the info novels, the governmental novels on the scandalous nature of the ongoing American aggression in Iraq? In Homefront, an American family confronts the reality of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Mainstay Press (February 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977459012
• ISBN-13: 978-0977459018
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,463,387 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Optimism of the Will, October 27, 2006

By 

R. Jacobs "Ron Jacobs" (Asheville, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Homefront (Paperback)

Homefront is the first novel in a trilogy that takes on the Iraq War and the complicity of the common citizen. Set somewhere in the United States, the story is told through the words and thoughts of one family and some members of their circle. A year after losing their son during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the novel presents the family's questions and doubts. Simultaneously, it carries on a conversation with the reader about the reasons for the young man's death.

Oftentimes, novels like Homefront are so political that they read more like a tract from some political sect than like a novel. In other words, the politics render the flow of the story and its characters to be woodenlike props. The story become secondary at best to the politics. While there is no doubt that this book is very political, just like there is no doubt as to the author's politics, Christini manages to make this work quite readable. The story has its own compelling style that sweeps the reader into the minds and hearts of its characters.

The son's death proves to be a cathartic event in the life of the family and the individuals that make it up. The mother can't get away from the doubts she has regarding her first statement to the press where she stated "Aaron (her son) died for all of us." It seems that within minutes of her utterance, she begins to wonder whether she should have said "Aaron died because of all of us." It is this question that the novel revolves around and it is this question that the author wants each of us to answer for ourselves.

Like Upton Sinclair's King Coal or even John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, Homefront is part moral and political outrage and part story. Taken from today's headlines, there are themes in this book that read like the evening news. However, the format of fiction allows the writer (and the reader) to go beyond the soundbite. Thereby that ordinary US family becomes an intellectually and emotionally complex creature. Mom not only questions the complicity of her politician cousin, she also questions her own. The dead man's brother wonders how much the world of sports and macho masculinity created he soldier his brother became. His sisters move from their very private worlds to the public sphere where nothing is certain but their own convictions. It is the author's hope that the reader will do the same.

Homefront is an overtly political and staunchly antiwar novel. This in itself is a rarity in today's world of publishing. Besides the novels of Washington corruption and chicanery mentioned above, Tom Clancy and a myriad of others publish works that justify and encourage the warmongers and their backers, all the while implying to the reading public that the world the imperialists made is the only real world and one that not only deserves to be, but is as permanent as the mountains of the Himalayas. Not since Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five has there been a novel for the US market that so clearly addressed war from an oppositional viewpoint. Homefront is a noble attempt to change that fictional reality.

5.0 out of 5 stars powerful, well written political novel, July 10, 2007

By 

William Ryan - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Homefront (Paperback)

There are no political novels regarding Iraq war. Tony christini is the first to present a powerful, well researched fictional novel. Christini is able to make the impact of the US failed policy come alive in the lives of ordinary Americans. Excellent piece of work