The Things We Do to Make It Home: A Novel - Hardcover

Gologorsky, Beverly

2.71

35 ratings by Goodreads

9780375502019: The Things We Do to Make It Home: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375502017 ISBN 13: 9780375502019

Publisher: Random House, 1999

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"Beverly Gologorsky's novel proves once again that good fiction is the truest telling of the history of our times.  The Things We Do to Make It Home uses the power of story to illuminate an untold tragedy.  It goes beyond the terrible effects of Vietnam on its veterans to the widening devastation on the lives of their lovers, wives, and children. Rendered with vivid immediacy, this first novel is a work of rare, revelatory impact."
--Helen Yglesias

The Things We Do to Make It Home captures, in clear, unadorned prose, the legacy the Vietnam War left to the wives and children of the men who fought in it.  Beverly Gologorsky's brilliantly constructed, deeply human novel charts the fates of six couples--the men who came home profoundly altered and the women who strove to create for them a safe haven yet in the end could do little more than bear witness to their pain.

In 1973, stateside and seemingly whole,Rooster, Frankie, Jason, and the other vets begin getting on with their lives.  Some marry, find jobs, buy houses. But beneath the surface activity, there's a dangerous fault line.

Twenty years later, the war is still with them: Rod and Emma face the loss of their house and everything they have worked for; Rooster lives on the street, alienated from his wife, Millie, and their rebellious daughter, Sara-Jo; Frankie returns to Vietnam to put his ghosts to rest.

The Things We Do to Make It Home invites comparison with the work of Tim O'Brien and Bobbie Ann Mason, but its 1990s setting completes the literature for our time. Told in a spare yet evocative, absolutely original voice, this is a story of deep hungers, the brevity of solace, and the limits of devotion to help those we love.

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Review:

In the decades since the end of the Vietnam War, American writers of all stripes have staked out that cataclysmic conflict as a subject for literature. Tim O'Brien, Michael Herr, Ron Kovic, David Rabe--the list of authors who have rendered men and war is long and impressive; the fact that there's nary a woman among them is perhaps not surprising, as combat is, for the most part, a male activity. But men weren't the only ones affected by Vietnam--for every soldier in a rice paddy, there was a mother, a sister, a lover back home; when their men came back changed by the experience of war, life changed for the women, as well. In her impressive debut novel, Beverly Gologorsky skillfully depicts the lives of three returned veterans and the women who love them. The story begins in 1973, shortly after Rooster, Frankie, Nick, Sean, Rod, and Jason return home from Vietnam, and it's obvious something's not quite right.

Waiting for his girlfriend, Millie, to dress for a party, Rooster can't sit still.

He counts twenty-two steps from the bedroom door to the end of the living room.... She doesn't like him barging in while she's dressing. She says that he's got to give her some privacy. Soon there'll be thunder, lightning. He begins snapping his fingers. Twenty-two steps. He turns, fixes his eyes on the door. Twenty-two steps. Hey, baby, anchors need to be close to their boats.

All of the men in Gologorsky's book are damaged goods and all the women do their best to patch them up, with mostly disappointing results. What elevates this novel above your run-of-the-mill tale of dysfunction and heartache is Gologorsky's unsentimental yet compassionate rendering of all her characters, both male and female. Though the plot is occasionally thin, the pain and passion carry you through.

From the Back Cover:

Advance praise for Beverly Gologorsky's THE THINGS WE DO TO MAKE IT HOME

"In The Things We Do to Make It Home, Beverly Gologorsky shines a brilliant and disturbing light into a time and place too long left in shadows by American literature. With great compassion and insight, she opens up to us not only the psychic realm of returned Vietnam vets but the even more neglected stories of the women--wives and daughters both--who loved them."
--Susan Faludi

"Beverly Gologorsky is on intimate terms with the mysterious reservoirs of feeling her men and women bring to the task of making it home from a war that won't let go. She also knows the worlds in which they move, the barrooms, beauty shops, city parks at night, hospitals, and airports, and renders them beautifully. But it's her extraordinary sensitivity to the burden of history that Vietnam's veterans and their families carry in the marrow of their lives that marks The Things We Do to Make It Home for the shortlist of postwar classics."

--Carol Brightman

"Beverly Gologorsky's remarkable The Things We Do to Make It Home rings with truth. This is forceful writing about the undertow of the Vietnam War and other undersides of American life that I've seen evoked nowhere else. It's a gripping read."

--Todd Gitlin

"A poignant reminder of the ravages our country suffered from the saddest of all possible wars."

--Carolyn See

"A wrenching and original novel on the wages of war and the damage done by wrecked men to the women and children who want to love them."

--Gloria Emerson

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