Customer Reviews

Vivienne

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Set in 1968, a newspaper reporter covering the Vietnam antiwar movement, falls in love with Vivienne, the beautiful Vietnamese wife of a US army intelligence officer. She has a secret so vital to her husband that he is willing to give her up to the reporter if she will only tell. The ensuing "Vivienne War," artfully woven into the back drop of the Vietnam War, mirrors and blends with the traumatic events of 1968: The Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, the DNC riots in Chicago, LBJ, university riots with tear gas and clubbing police, George McGovern, Eugene McCarthy, Richard Nixon etc. Vivienne is throbbing with emotion, suspense, excitement, blood, anguish, sex, and rioting in the streets. This is a brand new offering by Richard Hoyt, the prolific Pacific NW novelist famous for fast paced, exotic thrillers and page turning mysteries. Vivienne should appeal to Hoyt fans and readers of military fiction, but moreover to anyone who lived through 1968 or wished they had. If you think the election of 2000 was eventful, just go back to 1968.

Again tough to rate. I choose 4 Stars when 3 1/2 stars may be more accurate. I just want to comment on the Dates used in the Book, because no one else has. In another book by Hoyt (The one co-written with the Congressman), there were complaints about the dates used. In "Vivienne", Munich obviously was not in 1939. WWII was already in effect in September of 1939. Also Dien Bien Phu fell in 1954, not 1956! How could any responsible writer (not to mention editors) make these obvious mistakes?

In a dramatic turnaround, novelist Richard Hoyt provides us with some (possibly real-life?) secrets of the Vietnam war in his latest book, the touching and thrilling VIVIENNE. It's obvious that, through metonymy, Vivienne, the aging serviceman's Vietnamese wife, is a stand-in for VietNam itself, mysterious, slightly brutal, earthy.

What secrets does Vivienne hide? She is lovely and sometimes outrageous, but often so quiet you suspect she's covering up a crime so awful even she is frightened of her own "reveal." It's a story of publicity and privacy, the firestorm of war and the extreme hush of the sex act, of two men who come close to respect as they grip themselves over the taut body of the woman who tempts them both . . . VIVIENNE, by Richard Hoyt. Add a star if you have visited VietNam or the Pacific Northwest.