David Rabe

Jun 20 2010

In the Mail: Girl By The Road At Night

Girl by the Road at Night: A Novel of Vietnam by David Rabe

Publishers Weekly

Rabe, widely known for his Vietnam plays (Sticks and Bones; etc.), delivers his first Vietnam novel, a competent addition to a very busy subgenre. Pfc. Joseph Whitaker is a draftee from Platteville, Wis., who hopes he will learn how to repair cars in the army. Quach Ngoc Lan is a prostitute whose often abusive clients are GIs. After Whitaker arrives in-country, he, like nearly every GI he meets, spends his free time getting drunk or stoned and looking for sex, which is how he runs into Lan. Rabe presents Lan with some caution—her interiority is murkier than Whitaker’s—as her feelings about Whitaker evolve and, in a haunting bit of foreshadowing, she’s visited by her uncle, who wants a photo of her to put on the family altar. How that photo falls into Whitaker’s hands, and what he does with it, is the plot’s cruel point of convergence. Although Rabe doesn’t add much to our understanding of Vietnam, this novel amply demonstrates the war’s relentlessly dehumanizing power.

By Kevin Holtsberry • In The Mail • 0 • Tags: , ,

Jul 31 2009

In the Mail: fiction

Vanished–> Vanished by Joseph Finder

Publishers Weekly

Known for his stand-alones, bestseller Finder (Power Play) introduces Nick Heller, an elite corporate intelligence specialist and former Special Services badass, in this exciting series opener. After a frantic call from his 14-year-old nephew, Gabe, Heller returns home to Washington, D.C., from a job in California to find Gabe’s mother in a coma and Gabe’s stepfather, Roger, who is Heller’s older brother, vanished without a trace. Though the brothers have been estranged since their father’s much-publicized securities fraud conviction years earlier, Nick vows to protect Gabe and his mother and unravel the mystery of Roger’s alleged abduction. The investigation leads him to some disturbing revelations about Roger, not the least of which involves a powerful-and dangerous-private military company. Written in staccato chapters that are emotionally supercharged and action packed, this thriller will more than satisfy adrenaline junkies and have them guessing until the very end.

–> Dinosaurs on the Roof by David Rabe

Publishers Weekly

In his entertaining second novel, Obie Award–winning playwright Rabe (In the Boom Boom Room ) presents an overly eventful day-in-the-life of two women in smalltown Iowa. Elderly Bernice Doorley is convinced that in the company of Reverend Tauke and his followers, she will be on her way to heaven that evening, which, according to the reverend, is when the rapture is due to arrive. Bernice’s main concern is who will take care of her beloved pets, particularly her old dog, General. On the outs with daughter Irma, Bernice turns to Janet Cawley, the eccentric daughter of her recently deceased friend, whose days revolve around jogging, drinking and sleeping with her married boyfriend. Bernice waits in her best outfit to be beamed up; Janet, meanwhile, has other adventures with a former student (she was a fourth-grade teacher). Serious topics like spirituality and mother-daughter relationships get an airing in this satire of American excess, but the proceedings end up increasingly contrived.

By Kevin Holtsberry • In The Mail • 0 • Tags: , ,