No One Thinks of Greenland: A Novel [Paperback]

John Griesemer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 2002

“You’ll want to scratch.” These spoken words open to us the strange and beguiling world of young Rudy Spruance, forced to join the military due to a mysterious past, and sent for some inexplicable reason to a top-secret military hospital in Greenland. There he meets a wide cast of unusual and colorful characters, outcasts and rejects all; begins to fall for the commanding officer’s leggy and strong-willed girlfriend; and slowly uncovers the awful secret behind the portion of the base dubbed “the Wing.”

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's 1959 at the start of this intelligent first novel, and the Korean War has been over for six years, but the horribly mutilated casualties hidden away in an obscure military hospital on the U.S. Army base at Qangattarsa, Greenland, are still living with its consequences. The Wing, as the hospital is called, is run by Col. Lane Woolwrap, a half-mad bureaucratic genius who equips the place with oak paneling and Tiffany lamps. Assigned to his command is army misfit Rudy Spruance, an information officer relegated to Qangattarsa for reasons unknown. Woolwrap orders Rudy to start a newspaper to boost morale, but Rudy's journalistic investigations uncover unpleasant facts about the history and the future of the hospital's patients. Qangattarsa is a mysterious and disorienting place, and the harsh Greenland landscape undermines the soldiers' sanity; glaciers move menacingly in the night, hordes of mosquitoes attack and the long polar darkness of winter is hard to bear. Griesemer is at his best describing the strange recreational activities that occupy the Greenland troops: chasing polar bears in jeeps, throwing beer blasts that degenerate into fistfights and public nudity. In its manic moments, the book recalls the topsy-turvy military worlds of Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, though it doesn't quite reach the subversive heights of its predecessors. Rudy's love affair with Sgt. Irene Teal, the colonel's aide and companion, is conventional, and where Heller's Yossarian was an inspired antihero, forging his own moral code in order to cope with his surreal surroundings, Rudy takes a more standard route, fighting for the weak against a malevolent system. Still, his struggle is a compelling one, as post-Korea and Vietnam revelations make the conspiracies imagined here near-plausible. Regional author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In a classic army snafu, Corporal Rudy Spruance is off-loaded from an airplane at a military installation in an unknown, very remote place. Awakening in a hospital bed after being bitten by a monstrous cloud of mosquitoes near the runway, he learns that he is in Greenland, at a secret hospital housing the most maimed and disfigured wounded of the Korean War. It's 1959, and only about "66 and two thirds" such victims remain. As Rudy finds his way, he learns that the limbless and faceless victims were reported missing in action. As they die in Greenland, next of kin are notified that their remains have been recovered in Korea. Rooted in truth, this is a terrific--possibly great--first novel. The sense of place is vivid, especially the Stark Raving Dark, the long winter that causes everyone to lose all sense of time, brawl senselessly, and burst into crying jags. The hospital wing that houses the victims is surreal but, oddly, as comforting as it is horrific. Primary characters, particularly the charismatic and enigmatic CO and the diffident Spruance, are fully formed. And the military mentality and attendant bureaucracy that influence everything but the environment offer a narrative glue for a quirky, affecting, and powerful read. Thomas Gaughan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Picador (May 3, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312283369
• ISBN-13: 978-0312283360
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,568,662 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Been there, seen that, April 27, 2005

By 

James O. Redman (Red Wing, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: No One Thinks of Greenland: A Novel (Paperback)

I was in Narsarsuaq in 2001 on a hunting trip. I was curious about the old US military airfield where we landed because my father in law had landed there as a crewmember in a B-17 on the way to England during WWII. The remains of the old US military buildings can still be seen. While on my trip, however, I heard from local people about the US military hospital located in Narsarsuaq for Korean War wounded. I was surprised to say the least. Then I later discovered Mr. Griesemer's excellent book. It not only accurately describes Greenland but it also accurately describes many of the aspects of army life (been there, done that, too). I would recommend this book highly as a good read!

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great story but it is fiction, September 5, 2003

By 

Barry Sax (Oak Park, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No One Thinks of Greenland: A Novel (Paperback)

I am writing a book about the sinking of the Army Troopship Dorchester by a U-Boat on February 3, 1943, just south of Greenland. The Dorchester was headed for the Army Command base at Narsarsuaq, called BW 1, in southwestern Greenland, and the 227 survivors were taken to the 188th Station Hospital at the base. This is the hospital referred to by the name Qangattarsa in Mr. Griesmener's excellent novel. Mr. Griesemer told me that the novel grew out of a single paragraph he had read in a 1990 book by another author. I obtained the other book, contacted the author, and learned that the paragraph in question in that book, which describes his adventures through the North, was based on a story he heard some years during a conversation with "two drunken Danes."

The hospital at Narsarsuaq was closed after the war, but its buildings survived, and the hospital was reactivated in the early 1950s, as the Cold War heated up and small U.S. garrisons protected the Radar stations in the north, the DEW Line, and the airfield at Narsarsuaq, through which planes continued to fly between the U.S and Europe. More than 10,000 planes had passed through during WW II, when the hospital had grown to 200 beds of its authorized 250. The U.S involvement in Greenland in the 1950s was much smaller and only 5 - 10 doctors, nurses, dentists and others staffed the hospital until it closed in the late 1950s.

I have done extensive research in the National Archives. I have had conversations with men and women who were stationed at the base in the 1950s, and most importantly with professional men and women who worked at the hospital. Uniformly, they have been surprised when they hear how their operation is being described.
I have not found any objective evidence of the existence of the situation described in Griesemer's novel. His wonderful imagination supplied details that filled out the basic story.

The Chief Military Archivist at the National Archives has been asked about the story several times over the years and has found nothing in the record, classified or not,to even suggest it may be true. In truth, badly burned or wounded men from Korea were treated at the Army's FitzSimons Rehabiliation Hospital in Denver. Historical fiction is fun and Griesemer is a fine novelist. His novel stimulates thinking about what might have happened, but it should not be confused with history.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars but am i disappointed?, August 30, 2004

By 

bookie brown (germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No One Thinks of Greenland: A Novel (Paperback)

I read this book after falling in love with the the author's later novel "Signal & Noise". I had enjoyed the epic sweep of the writer's narrative and themes. I guess I am a sucker for those novels that meld tales of scientific discovery and endeavour with the highly charged emotional lives of fictional characters...and particularly the excitement where the two threads collide and crackle in recognition of each other.

This book is very different from "Signal & Noise". I had expected "olde worlde" and I got "other worldly", feeling as though I was reading about some kind of freak show, which I sense is the intention. Tales of the drunken and depressive debauchery of the US military under the maddening influence of the neverending Greenland night and the northern lights were a little too unsettling for me.

However, I have given the book four stars as it is largely beautifully written and has a terrific pace. A short, snappy read that keeps you asking questions about what will happen next, but which is a bit short on comfort factor.

I particularly liked the character detail in the main figure, Rudy, who has been in trouble with the law for breaking into people's homes but never stolen a thing. Descriptions of him sitting in alien living rooms just to absorb the secure family atmosphere he never had border on the heartbreaking.

I am actually writing this review as the world needs more and more of John Griesemer. In answer to the question "but am I disappointed?" the answer has to be "just a little". But that lies in the weight of my expectation.

"Signal and Noise" and "No One Thinks of Greenland" are poles apart but both enriching in their own unigue way.

A fabulous writer. Next!