The Forever War by Dexter Filkins (Vintage, June, 2009).
Dexter Filkins, a singular and brave foreign correspondent for The New York Times, offers an informed, insider’s glimpse to the chaotic war fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. A fascinating study of contemporary war, Filkins achieves raw and riveting witness in his written portrayal of people, images, events and interviews. In Afghanistan he covers the strife and brutality of Talibani executions, wandering orphans in Kabul, landmines, competing war lords, hellish checkpoints overrun with rape and plunder. And in Iraq – which is the centerpiece of the book – he reports from the battlefront, embedded with American soldiers who are themselves children, waging war in a chaotic tribal culture where Sunnis and Shiites and hundreds of insurgent groups are entangled in a brutal battle of revenge. By becoming “part of the place, part of the despair, part of the death,” Filkins offers a plainly intelligent, non-political, non-preachy, horrifying portrait of war (9.5/10).
Monday, August 31, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
RollnSmoke Reviews: LOVING FRANK
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (Ballantine Books, 2008).
Mamah Bothwick Cheney is an educated but unfulfilled mother and housewife living in early-20th century Oak Park, Illinois, when she meets and begins a romantic affair with the brilliant and legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. At the expense of their marriages and families, they run off to Europe together and return to The States to commence a bucolic life, co-habitating “in sin” among the isolated fields of Wisconsin where Frank designs an idyllic farming homestead just for them called Taliesin. While this historical novel provides insights into the eccentric characters of both protagonists – they are “alive. Together” -- it is difficult for the reader to summon sympathy for their much-maligned and exposed romance because they’re unbearably narcissistic and comfortably privileged as each constantly indulges his and her artistic and intellectual whims, so that there is no preparation for the final, climaxing tragedy of the story (7/10).
Mamah Bothwick Cheney is an educated but unfulfilled mother and housewife living in early-20th century Oak Park, Illinois, when she meets and begins a romantic affair with the brilliant and legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. At the expense of their marriages and families, they run off to Europe together and return to The States to commence a bucolic life, co-habitating “in sin” among the isolated fields of Wisconsin where Frank designs an idyllic farming homestead just for them called Taliesin. While this historical novel provides insights into the eccentric characters of both protagonists – they are “alive. Together” -- it is difficult for the reader to summon sympathy for their much-maligned and exposed romance because they’re unbearably narcissistic and comfortably privileged as each constantly indulges his and her artistic and intellectual whims, so that there is no preparation for the final, climaxing tragedy of the story (7/10).