In Country: a novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "I have to stop again, hon," Sam'grandmother says, tapping her on the shoulder..." (more)
Key Phrases: flea bomb, cookie factory, Moon Pie, Agent Orange, Burger Boy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

YA Sam, 17, is obsessed with the Vietnam War and the effect it has had on her lifelosing a father she never knew and now living with Uncle Emmett, who seems to be suffering from the effects of Agent Orange. In her own forthright way, she tries to sort out why and how Vietnam has altered the lives of the vets of Hopewell, Kentucky. Her untempered curiosity and imagination sprint off in all directions as she examines closely the often undiscussed, but always noticed, aspects of daily life. In this coming-of-age novel, Sam ponders many problems, among them Emmett's crusty, salve-covered pimples, veteran Tom's inability to have an erection and her good friend Dawn's pregnancy. Although Sam lives in a disheveled, tawdry house, she brings a freshness of spirit to the way she scrutinizes and revels in life. When she wants to understand living conditions in the Vietnam jungles, she decides she has to experience it, so spends the night beside a local swamp. A harshly realistic, well-written look at the Vietnam War as well as the story of a young woman maturing. Pam Spencer, Mount Vernon High School Library, Fairfax, Va.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Sam Hughes, whose father was killed in Vietnam, lives in rural Kentucky with her uncle Emmett, a veteran whom she suspects is suffering from exposure to Agent Orange. Sam is a typical teenager, trying to choose a college, anticipating a new job at the local Burger Boy, sharing intimacies with her friend Dawn, breaking up with her high school boyfriend, and dealing with her feelings for Tom, one of Emmett's buddies. Sam feels that her life is bound to the war in Vietnam and becomes obsessed with the idea because of the reluctance of her family and Tom to talk about it. Her father's diary finally provides the insight she seeksinsight she cannot accept until she has visited the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. In Country is both a powerful and touching novel of America that analyzes the impact of the 1960s on the culture of the 1980s and a beautiful portrayal of an often forgotten area of the country. Essential for adult and YA collections. Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale Lib.
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (August 2, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060835176
• ISBN-13: 978-0060835170
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #68,617 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More good, solid work from Bobbie Ann Mason., August 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: In Country (Paperback)

People who read for plot only, as have, apparently, some of the previous reviewers, are missing many other elements of the novel, any novel. Bobbie Ann Mason often writes about the Southern female and her transformation through discovery. Exactly what that woman discovers changes from story to story, but Sam is definitely one of Mason's dynamic Southern females. I am sorry, too, that some reviewers don't seem to appreciate Mason's use of contextual details to provide a landscape against which these transformations take place. I just really appreciate her willingness to refer to anything from Pop Tarts to Avon Products. That's the environment within which many of us do experience our lives. And Emmett? He's my uncle ... or my cousin . . . or my brother . . .

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some people apparently don't get it. . . , May 18, 2006

By	Shelley R. Hughes (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After reading numerous reviews that refer to this book as "boring," I felt I needed to speak up against some of the semi-literate reviewers.

"In Country" is not an action novel. It's not meant to be a moral guide to living as a teenager. It's more than that, a complex, beautiful novel with multiple threads: about growing up, idenitity, place, war, and legacy. Mason is excellent at capturing the time and place of Western Kentucky; even though the town is never named, I'm certain she's writing about Mayfield, near where my husband grew up.

If you can't pass high school English, you probably won't enjoy "In Country." If you can appreciate a complex, emotional novel, one that makes you think, then this book is a modern classic.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of the most important American novels of the century, January 14, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: In Country (Paperback)

"In Country" is several books at once: among them, a chronicle of a significant era in American history, a rumination on the evaporation of American regionalism, and a standard coming of age novel. The story revolves around Samantha Hughes,unusually bright and aware for a teenager growing up in a western Kentucky backwater (probably not unlike Bobbie Ann Mason herself). Born in 1966, Sam's father died in Vietnam before she could meet him. When she turns 18, it occurs to her that no one in the family has ever really told her anything about him -- like American society, which wanted to forget about the dirty little war in southeast Asia, her family had more or less swept him under the rug. But Sam decides to go on her own journey to discover who her dad was, and what that senseless conflict might have been about.On her way, Mason weaves a brilliant tapestry of American culture in the mid-1980s, in which cable television and the proliferation of gigantic shopping malls have flattened out distictions between regions and the peculiar quality of rural existence. At the climax of the story, Sam travels to Washington with her beloved uncle and her paternal grandmother to visit the Vietnam memorial; when she finds her own name inscribed on the wall, it hammers home the message that the Vietnam experience is about all of us. "In Country" may have less impact now than before it was published; subsequently, many works of popular culture (the films "Platoon" and "Casualties of War" as well as the television series "China Beach") have carried similar messages. But few have done so as elegantly and compellingly as this book.