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Gologorsky, Beverly ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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The Things We Do to Make It Home : A Novel
Gologorsky, Beverly
1999 02872384 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... Review: ""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." Review: "For so long war has been described from a male point of view. In this warm, loving novel, we hear about Vietnam through the eyes of the women who live with Vietnam vets. These women are unforgettable and the stories they relate are both sad and uplifting. This is a book worth reading more than once.". In stock now 2004. 211 pages. Random House 0375502017 / 9780375502019
Hard Cover Brand New Brand New Book Jacket New York, NY, U.S.A. Out of Print
Price:
15.75 USD
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THINGS WE DO TO MAKE IT HOME
Gologorsky, Beverly
1999 47641 From Barnes & Noble The Barnes & Noble Review For almost 30 years now, scores of novels have been published annually about America's involvement in the Vietnam War. It's enough to make you wonder what more is there to say. Yet occasionally a finely tuned and underexplored story hovers above the rest. Beverly Gologorsky's The Things We Do to Make it Home is a brilliant exploration of how the war affected women at home. Both the prose and the content bring to mind Robert Olen Butler's debut novel, The Alleys of Eden, and the stories in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. Simple in style, this invitingly painful debut marks not only the entrance of a promising new voice in fiction but the addition of a bold female voice to the annals of male-dominated Vietnam literature. Gologorksy explains why the public remains so fascinated with Vietnam. "There's no closure," she says. "Writers are trying to make sense of a war that didn't, and never will, make sense." In the late '60s, Gologorsky was intensely involved with the antiwar and women's movements. She worked for several radical publications, such as Viet Report and Leviathan, which catapulted her onto the front lines of many heated social and political causes. Hearing people constantly talk about ending a war was very empowering for Gologorsky, and before long she was playing a major part in demonstrations like the Columbia strike of 1968. "It wasn't until I finished this book," she says, "that I acknowledged it as being my book about the war." And it took seven years to finish. As a single mother employed full-time for a legal publisher,Gologorskywrote for two hours every morning before her daughter woke up and before she had to go to work. "It wasn't easy to write," she admits. "I found myself wanting to get up after ten minutes almost every day. But the schedule of my life forced me to sit there and push through. In my case, resistance was healthy." The Things We Do to Make it Home is a searing account of eight women connected by the men in their lives - husbands, brothers, and fathers, all Vietnam vets - who, as one character says, "lived their whole lives in a year or two. Nothing and no one that came after matters." These are characters built around men she became familiar with during her years as an antiwar activist. Gologorsky modeled her female characters on women she experienced in the white, middle-class, urban Bronx neighborhood where she grew up. "They're not real people," she says, "but composites based on voices I've known all my life." At the opening of the book, it's 1973. The men have recently returned home from the war. They meet often to drink, smoke pot, and pop pills - "wearing eyeballs all night." On one Saturday, a group of couples (beauticians, truck drivers, and the unemployed) meet to watch the Watergate hearings on TV. The women swarm the perimeter and steal away to talk about how different their lives are since the war. One of the women, trying to understand what happened to her husband, says, "There's something between us, a kind of space I can't get past." Fast-forward to 20 years later. The men are still "infected with the same weirdness." Most are abject alcoholics; some live on the streets and beg for change; some hear voices; and some are dead. One even returns to Vietnam, hoping to find what he lost there. "When the men went to this war," Gologorsky explains, "like for all wars, they trained to become soldiers. In that training, a belief system was instilled. But the first week in-country, this belief system broke down. These men were no longer soldiers; the men became murderers to themselves." The women? Although they try to move on, they're ultimately unable to shrug off the weight of a war they never knew. Kind of depressing, no? Well, there's hope. And her name is Sara-Jo, the teenage daughter of Millie, who is dying of cancer, and Rooster, who lives in the streets, "a witness wandering the world." Sara-Jo is as ornery as the day is long and very critical of the men who fought in Vietnam and the women that suffer them Random House Publishing Group 0-375-50201-7 / 9780375502019
Hardcover As New Condition New York
Price:
23.17 USD
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