Life Between Wars - Hardcover

Patton, Robert H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1877946974 ISBN 13: 9781877946974

Publisher: Permanent Pr Pub Co, 1997

Synopsis

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About this title

From Library Journal:

The grandson of old blood-and-guts himself, Patton (The Pattons, LJ 3/1/94) is enjoying the simultaneous publication of his first two novels. In Up, Down & Sideways, Philip Halsey breaks with his father, David Holscheimer, just as David broke with his father. Demanding his inheritance and dropping out of college, Philip embarks on spectacular financial and sexual escapades. After losing all to find himself, the prodigal son returns to the home office of his family's trust and settles in as a responsible family man. Patton's first-person narrative is rich with comic episodes and wry phrasing, and his picaresque tale provides insight into recurring problems between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, and lovers of all descriptions. Focusing on a homicide and its aftermath, Life Between Wars is more somber. With a large cast of strangely intertwined characters?a Vietnam veteran who seeks revenge for a fragging incident, a prep-school student trying desperately to lose his virginity, a retarded stable boy who emulates John Wayne, an addled octogenarian who hunts miracles from the roof of his mansion, and a homosexual painter who heals in the throes of his own illness?it is also more expansive. These residents and visitors on tiny Penscot Island comprise a confused but still functioning community. Despite an often diffuse story, Patton shows how unconventional but honest affections can displace vengeance. Both books are recommended for public libraries. [For a biography of Patton's father and grandfather, see Brian M. Sobel's The Fighting Pattons, reviewed on p. 102.?Ed.]?Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookevill.
-?Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Patton, the grandson of Gen. George S. Patton (and the author of a frank, much praised memoir, The Pattons: A Personal History of an American Family, 1994), makes an impressive debut as a novelist with the simultaneous publication of two books (see below). This one is an edgy, tough-minded portrait of the lives, secrets, resentments, and longings of a group of year-round residents on Penscot Island (a place overwhelmed by tourists in the summer, but isolated and grim through much of the rest of the year), distinguished by Patton's grasp of what life is like for some truly marginalized figures (struggling fishermen and their frustrated, despairing wives, rootless Vietnam vets, a variety of wanderers incapable of setting down roots anywhere) and by his ability to keep a complex plot involving murder, vengeance, and the struggle to settle old ghosts in motion. The voices ring true, the victories here are believably muted, and Patton's evocation of a harsh, beautiful place is exact and convincing. A precise, powerful effort. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Permanent Pr Pub Co
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1877946974
• ISBN 13: 9781877946974
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 252