Lead Review (a novel of the VIETNAM war)
- Book: A River in May
- Location: Vietnam
- Author: Edward Wilson
“…when you get to Vietnam, you step through the looking glass…”
This is a novel written almost as a memoir, the events and places are conjured up with a veracity and realism that indicate the author knows his subject.
In style and feel this novel is very much like Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, which gets down deep and dirty as the Americans push deeper into the country and into hostile territory. Lieutenant Lopez is escaping his molly-coddling family and a tragedy that has left its mark. Fighting in Vietnam seems a credible choice, as “… the U.S army of the sixties still provided routes to those dark places where repentance and suffering were possible“. A period of fighting in Vietnam equated to a kind of penance.
The reality, of course, was all too visceral and the author describes events in realistic and forthright terms. There is the camaraderie of course and one learns during one of their conversations that Saigon may have had the second highest rate of venereal disease infections at the time but Houston was at no.1 (the things you learn!). Apart from the odd interchange to lighten the frankly depressing narrative, there are descriptions to curdle one’s blood and it is the “blood smell” that Lopez can’t shake off. There is plenty of action and armoury, patrolling choppers, rocket attacks and the annihilation of local villages and people – whether they were resistance fighters on not depended on one’s viewpoint – and plenty of scuttling through the undergrowth and napalm and agent orange attacks. Lieutenant Lopez goes in with one view but gradually comes to understand the realities of what is really going on.
This is a novel that one could read before a trip to Vietnam in order to gain a little more understanding of that period in history. There is perhaps nothing new in the book, the stark reality is hard-hitting and there is a lot of adventure action with lots of hardware description. W G Sebald says of the novel “Stylistically sophisticated, visually and emotionally present; the pace is good and Wilson knows how to hold the reader’s attention”. I think that is a largely apposite observation but it is not my preferred genre.
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