by Norman Mailer
This World War II classic novel spent 62 weeks on the best seller list. With half a platoon of fully fleshed out characters, this book is a tribute to miscommunication, giving several viewpoints of each action in the main story - the capture of a fictional island in the Pacific Theater of Operation....
TBR Busting 2013The Guardian: Friday 13 May 1949 02.08 BSTPlace the cassette on 'hold' - went into this blind and didn't realise that it is 721 pages long. That is a lot longer than I am prepared to dedicate to this subject at this time.
But y'know, an 800-page book about terrible war...it's asking a lot of me.
I personally am a very big fan of books that speak of war, and this one was just perfect! It captures the essence of the human mind in contact with things like cruelty, death, pain, being constantly bossed around and having to do things you do not want.. Though it has a lot of characters, the author...
As a young woman I swore I would never read anything by that bastard Norman Mailer. I'd read "The Executioner's Song" and thought it okay but I despised Mailer as if from a personal feminist vendetta. In fact, I still do. BUT this book knocked my socks off. I loved it. So much for prejudice.
Classic WW II novel. A must read and, IMHO, the best Mailer ever wrote.
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