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Title: Don't Mean Nothing : Short Stories of Vietnam by SUSAN KRAMER O'NEILL ISBN: 0-345-44608-9 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 30 October, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.88 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: This means something
Comment: Sue O'Neill's compelling stories, whether those that shock and sadden or those that amuse, bring an important dimension to the human side of the Vietnam War. No matter where you were or which side you were on during that period of time that changed our country so incredibly much, or if you were even born, you owe it to yourself to buy this book with its gripping and perceptive tales of war through a woman's eyes. If you don't know this nurse's stories, you don't know the Vietnam War and you don't know us.
Rating: 5
Summary: Incoming!
Comment: Susan O'Neill's collection of short stories DON'T MEAN NOTHING is more than isolated thoughts about what being in Vietnam as a participant in that bloody political blunder. This book reads like a novel in that the same characters weave in and out of these short thought/experiences and it does begin as a year of combat duty for a nurse and ends as that nurse goes back stateside. Perhaps the term 'Short Stories of Vietnam' references the way life was lived during there - moments in between Incoming shellings, explosions, overwhelming Medevacs, moments when there was time for the simple acts of being alive like sex, comradery in the hooch bars, momentary communication with soulmates dressed/talking/feeling/fearing like you.
O'Neill is a master of terse statement; her economy of words, richly descriptive as they are, can click a photo thought or memory so precisely that even a few pages can burn an experience on your psyche that is indelible. O'Neill knows her material, having served as a nurse in Vietnam in 1969-70. Obviously a bright thinker and writer, she has elected to wait 30 years before committing to paper her responses to that most unpopular of 'wars': that distance adds a more sensitive quality to her stories than would an immediate visceral response after returning to the States, a time when absolutley noone wanted to hear about Vietnam, much less try to understand it from a participant's point of view.
Although the entire 'collection' of stories is well done, there are bound to be tales that hurt the heart more than others. For this reader the Introduction is the most powerful of all, carrying with it flashbacks and images, thoughts and words that are so powerful they re-kindle nightmares. 'The Boy from Montana', 'Medcap', 'Prometheus Burned' are cogent, painful, and magnificent. But O'Neill can also write comedy, especially the sick type of humor that maintained sanity in Vietnam. All of these stories, ending with a terific 'Commendation', flesh out the details of the history of the Vietnam conflict. O'Neill is up there with Philip Caputo, Stewart O'Nan, Tim O'Brien and others who have dared write the truth. Here is not just the feminine input, but the nurses' or noncombatants' view. An excellent book by a sensitive, fresh writer.
Rating: 5
Summary: Highly recommended
Comment: I live in Indonesia (where I grew up), and do most of my reading during fairly frequent and extended surf safaris on boats. I ordered DON'T MEAN NOTHING from Amazon, and when it arrived, I read the first couple stories and then forced myself to put the book away, saving it for precious boat-time reading material. I just got back from my latest trip, and I tell you, I read two stories a day, taking them like a illicit drug. And like an addict, when the book came to end, I was severely wishing there were another dozen to read.
Anybody who's reading this review already knows the collection is set in Vietnam during the war, told from the original perspective of medical personnel working with war casualties. But as with all great stories-or at least, the kind of stories I really love-the authentic and intriguing details of setting and scene only serve to enhance the characters, and it was this assemble of ordinary folk (acting pretty much as ordinary folk would in extraordinary situations) that made the collection such a riveting read for me. The story "Butch" made me-macho surfer dude--misty-eyed, and "Monkey on Our Banks" made me laugh out loud, because I knew a monkey just like that one in my boarding school (it once stole and ate a bunch of candy laxative, with predictable results in the girls' dorm).
As an oftentimes struggling and paper-ripping writer, I marveled at author O'Neill's way with words that don't get in the way yet do immaculate service to the story. But mostly, I so enjoyed the reading that my inner critic never made a peep.
Highly recommended.
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Title: Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam by Lynda Van Devanter, Lynda Van Devanter ISBN: 1558492984 Publisher: Univ. of Massachusetts Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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Title: A Piece of My Heart : The Stories of 26 American Women Who Served in Vietnam by Keith Walker ISBN: 089141617X Publisher: Presidio Press Pub. Date: 05 February, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: A World of Hurt: Between Innocence & Arrogance in Vietnam by Mary Reynolds Powell, Denny Wendell, David H. Hackworth ISBN: 0966531957 Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: AMERICAN DAUGHTER GONE TO WAR by Winnie Smith ISBN: 0671870483 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Dispatches by Michael Herr ISBN: 0679735259 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 06 August, 1991 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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