Float

Follows the violent and absurdly comic experiences of John Paul Dubecheck, a Navy lieutenant serving in the Mekong River Delta area during the Vietnam War

Lieutenant Junior Grade Dubecheck is the lonely commander of the smallest riverine task force in Vietnam. Dubecheck's only skill is leading his men--he neither understands nor cares about the Navy, the Vietnamese, or the rest of life. We join him on a couple of missions, at rest in the Officers' Club, and tending to his seriously disturbed commanding officer. Dubecheck gets rest and relaxation in Hawaii, and in a fit of drunken exuberance, flies to Seattle. There he meets what passes for normal American society, which he finds no more comprehensible than the war. On his return he takes a congressman out on a faked combat patrol, with predictably bizarre results. The plot begins in midair and is left hanging, a good metaphor for Dubecheck's life and the war. Eyre has married Joseph Heller's Catch 22 ( LJ 11/1/61) to Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone (Delacorte, 1973) and the hallucinatory result works reasonably well. Recommended for subject collections.
-Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army TRALINET Ctr., Fort Monroe, Va.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.