Offers the powerful story of what one man's life, disappearance, and death means to those he knew, loved, and, ultimately left behind during the Vietnam War; the gay, feminist, and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s; the drugs, greed and AIDS of the 1980s; and the uncertainty of the 1990s. IP.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Letting loose, indeed. Leland addresses more than a few big themes in a sweeping novel about generational change in the 1960s and '70s. As the novel opens, the town of Rhymers Creek is turning out for the funeral of Bobbo Starwick, its golden-boy football star whose remains, after 25 years, have finally been shipped from Vietnam. There's Fred, a former classmate and teammate, who also served in Nam, and has never adjusted to civilian life. There's Melva, a former lover, trapped in a safe but passionless marriage. And there's Barry, Bobbo's gay half-brother, who has finally returned home after gaining notoriety as a Robert Mapplethorpe-like photographer. Through extended use of flashbacks, Leland (The Book of Marvels; The Professor of Aesthetics) tells their tales. Subtlety of character suffers some as Leland burdens his cast with representing the monumental social changes that have rocked America?the Vietnam war and its aftermath, feminism, gay liberation. The notable exception to this rule is Barry, who emerges wholly sympathetic as Leland convincingly evokes the exhilarating gay scene of New York in the 1970s and the subsequent onset of AIDS. Leland's stitching together of theme and plot is ragged. But he writes with generous feeling, and some beauty, of how Barry, the gay apostate from the American dream, is able, at long last, to join his archetypal hometown as it buries Bobbo, the native son who had been expected, unfairly, to shoulder that dream.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
After 25 years of missing in action, Bobbo Starwick's body is returned from Vietnam to Rhymers Creek for burial. His homecoming ignites memories for Bobbo's family and friends. Fred, a down-and-out veteran, endures alcoholic reveries of atrocities committed in Vietnam and remains haunted by political betrayals. Barry, Bobbo's younger half-brother, recounts the confusion and euphoria of gay liberation and the war at home for peace and acceptance. Belva, Bobbo's high school girlfriend, recalls a sweet and loving boy whose wartime letters grew increasingly disturbed and monstrous. Leland's graphic and gripping fifth novel (e.g., The Professor of Aesthetics, LJ 2/15/94) accurately depicts the tumult and divisions of the Sixties and the precarious roads chosen by individuals. Highly recommended for all fiction collections.?Sheila M. Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Sweeping, Dramatic Study in Humanism,
By A Customer
This review is from: Letting Loose: A Novel (Hardcover)
It's a rarity in my opinion for an experienced American writer in mid-career to disburden him or herself with the grand intent of penning the next Great American Novel. In Christopher T. Leland's Letting Loose however, that's exactly what happens, but purposefully, for the high-minded ideal of penning a leg of American History under the terms and guidelines of the next Great Human Novel. With a backdrop and range that sweeps over so many monumental moments in contemporary American History, Mr. Leland unfolds this story methodically. He bends some characters as they travel through and breaks others all to pieces, but in each case, they all must come to terms with the humilities, humors, and horrors of what it means to be human. Even in the minor characters, we find stories of great interest and weight. The sheer beauty of the writing becomes at times, starkly contrasted by what it is that's being described. From Boom Boom Bars in the swelter of Vietnam to the subtle anxiousness of cruising Christopher Street in the Village, the most wonderful allure of otherworldliness sets in through the writing-- an ethereal and alarming sensation. More than anything though, softness and connections come through the story, a simple tale really- the need for closure of so many open wounds: open American wounds, open human wounds. Two sons heading in vastly different directions and the connections they make through life and in death, connections that further ramify and ripple, tripping little switches in others. This book is crowded thick with the weight of what it means to try to connect with people, and what comes of disconnection from them as well. Christopher T. Leland's Letting Loose reminds us of things we forgot to put away, people we have not called in years-- but should, and secret, little things long since buried in the backyards of our first childhood homes. Through the course of revisiting some sixty years of defining events in the American Experience, the novel links us with its characters, with our own pasts; it reveals the contrasted human qualities of the ineffable compassion and the incomprehensible coldness of which we are all capable.
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