A Kind of Redemption: Stories - Hardcover

Hathaway, Stephen

9780807116111: A Kind of Redemption: Stories

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807116114 ISBN 13: 9780807116111

Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr, 1991

Eleven stories deal with veterans of different wars, a soldier who is forced to kill to defend himself, a father's death ironically rescuing a soldier from Viet Nam, and an Army translator who has trouble adjusting to postwar life

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Eleven stories--uneven, but some with an original perspective- -that concern the Vietnam War and its aftermath for a college- educated vet who becomes a professor. Timothy Grote and other protagonists as well have been ``snatched from the war at the last minute'' to work in personnel and to train as translators. In the title story, Sharpe compares this process to his father's WW II experience, when his father was driven the length of the Bataan Peninsula. A credible working-class patriotism is contrasted here to the confusion of the younger generation. Meanwhile, ``Freedom Bird'' manages to convey the surreal ambiguity faced by Simmons in Vietnam when he learns his father has been killed in a traffic accident, a death that buys the soldier a one-way ticket home. The story isn't much more than a sketch, but it works its limited terrain well. By contrast, ``The Colonial'' is a well-plotted piece about a translator with a ``knack for language'' who is forced to shoot a Vietnamese garbage- collector and gets a Bronze Star, but then must be transferred for his own protection. Of the several Vietnam-related stories concerning Grote, a former Peace Corps volunteer in the West Indies, ``Welcome to the Hothouse'' charts his arrival in Vietnam; ``Pringle's Moratorium'' deals with his training back in the States; and ``Grote Apart'' documents his post-traumatic stress, his drinking, the deterioration of his marriage, and his state of mind: ``The things that did happen when he was in Vietnam are far less interesting than the things that might have happened.'' A few sharpshooters here and several solid hits--all deserving inclusion in Vietnam collections. -- Copyright �1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Kicked out of the Peace Corps for horsing around, Timothy Grote ends up an Army translator in Vietnam. As the noncommittal, skeptical protagonist of many of the wise, compassionate stories in this remarkable debut collection, Grote lets readers catch sight of the war's garish unreality and utter futility. In the last three stories, set about 20 years after his Vietnam experience, we find beer-guzzling Grote dissipated, plagued by nightmares, destroying his marriage, then finally pulling himself together as a college professor and coming to terms with the psychic scars inflicted by his tour of duty. Offering astringent, totally unsentimental views of war, some of these stories explore anti-Semitism and racism in the ranks; others deal with conflicts between sons and their fathers who served in WW II; one or two extract macabre humor from war's irrationality. Hathaway's understated, razor-sharp style comes as a breath of fresh air.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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