The Farther Shore (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: compound press, The Farther Shore, The Farther Shorc, Fort Drum (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A unit of young American soldiers lost in an unnamed city in an unnamed desert nation struggle to maintain a tenuous grip on their lives in this haunting debut novel by Eck, a veteran of U.S. Army efforts in Somalia. Narrator Joshua Stantz recounts his wanderings with such quiet objectivity that the horrors he witnesses evoke winces and poetic details stand out in contrast: there are wounds that hiss and bubble, but there is also a girl's lone eyelash falling from the creases of a letter. Early in the book, Joshua is part of a group of six soldiers who, separated from their unit and under murky circumstances, kill two boys, but almost everything else about their circumstances remains unclear: where exactly are they and why? and who is the enemy? With these questions in the air, the formal rules of engagement become all but useless as the troops navigate a landscape rife with dangers—warring clans, armed thugs, the elements. Eck goes beyond the on-the-ground chaos of battle to capture the physical and psychological disorientation of modern war. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Three American soldiers are stranded in a war-blasted desert city in Africa. The heat, the sand, the impenetrable darkness are all exacting a toll. The enemy is everyone and anyone, even your comrades. The mission is vague, preposterous. The people are starving, desperate, and violent, tyrannized by warlords and clan loyalty. Packs of emaciated dogs roam through smoking ruins. All is obscured by haze, dust, and fear. Josh, a good boy from Wichita, Kansas, struggles to stay rational, vigilant, honorable. Santiago, their lieutenant, tells him, "Stop thinking so much." Their situation goes from bad to worse to all-out nightmare as they barely escape the city and set out for the sea. Every word in Eck's first novel is as solid as a stone. Every moment of crisis feels authentic in its terror and tragedy; indeed, Eck served as a soldier in Somalia at age 18. Heir to Hemingway, and damn near as powerful as Cormac McCarthy in The Road (2006), Eck has created a contemporary version of The Red Badge of Courage in this tale of one young man's trial by fire in the pandemonium of war in an age of high-tech weaponry and low-grade morality. Seaman, Donna

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions; First Edition. states and 1 in number line edition (September 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1571310576
• ISBN-13: 978-1571310576
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #793,114 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The misery of war, October 8, 2007

By	another reader "anonymous" - See all my reviews

Eck's book could stand as a parable for America's war in Iraq or any of our imperial wars that are fought faraway by a few men whose agonies civilians can never understand. A small group of soldiers cut off from their unit find that everything turns sour fast. Without malice and following standard operating procedures, they kill children who set off alarms by walking into their night position. More horrors follow. The men Eck depicts are neither good or bad: they do terrible things and terrible things are done to them because that is what happens in war.

In the area of operations Eck depicts, even nature is postindustrial, polluted, and hostile: "the ocean is out of tune." In this dismal setting that mirrors the soldiers' lives, Eck excels at depicting the fog of war where soldiers are lost, sick, and confused. Their actions are often dictated by chance in the midst of terrible situations. some die, others are mutilated, no one escapes intact.

The novel shows men at war without the Hollywood soundtrack or the happy ending of the movie version of Black Hawk Down, where the survivors walk into safety looking dewy fresh as if from a good night's sleep and having missed no good meals at the studio's buffet.

Even more than the novel's obvious applicability to America's hopeless mission in Iraq, this book stands on its own as a story of the misery of war. And these words apply to the experiences of Americans in many wars: ""We made a mess of this whole thing. And I'm sick with it."

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blackhawk Down meets Camus, November 11, 2007

By	Andy Rogers (Atlanta, Ga USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This one's a gem. The visceral reality of the best combat writing seamlessly merges with the febrile surrealism of Camus, not in the sense of hallucinations, but in reality seeming surreal. The effect is a heightened sense of reality, believe it or not. Simple prose and story, profound results--the true sign of virtuosity.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thanks for the story, March 18, 2008

By	Sarah Black - See all my reviews

Thanks for writing this story. It can't have been easy, and it wasn't easy to read. I couldn't stop reading, though. Great writing, deeply felt and very real- I'm a vet, too.
I felt so cold reading the story I turned the heater up, until the kid complained he was boiling- but I'm still cold. Looking forward to your next.