July 3, 2017
At the center of Gilvarry’s excellent second novel (after From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant) is Alan Eastman, a fading author on a mission to reestablish his literary and personal reputations. It’s 1973 when antihero Eastman is introduced. He’s in his 50s and in the middle of a crisis, having learned that his second wife, Penny, has left him, possibly for another man. Not quite a model, loyal husband, Eastman wastes no time before letting his suspicions and insecurities get the best of him. As part of a plan to win his wife back and keep his family intact, Eastman—though apprehensive—accepts an assignment to cover the tail end of the Vietnam war as a correspondent for the International Herald. The latter half of the book transports Eastman from his home in New York to Saigon, where he takes interest in Anne Channing, an ambitious reporter in her 30s who’s researching for a book project that will collect the personal narratives of local subjects. It’s in this relationship that the book’s greatest sources of tension reside; Channing attracts Eastman while challenging his ego, and one begins to root for her despite Eastman’s acts of condescension and professional sabotage. Gilvarry is skilled at highlighting the humor of hypocrisy, jealousy, exaggeration, and foolishness through scenes that crackle with amusing dialogue. The supporting characters come alive and animate every page, and play well off of Eastman, who, though volatile, petulant, and infuriating, still somehow comes across as endearing. Gilvarry succeeds in drawing Eastman as a convincing and recognizable composite of the breed of male figureheads who dominated American letters in the middle of the 20th century, only to realize the tides were slowly but surely beginning to turn against them.
June 15, 2017
A middle-aged literary lion heads to Vietnam to revive his respectability as a writer and husband.It's 1973, and Alan Eastman, the hero of Gilvarry's second novel (From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, 2012), has come to recognize that his reputation is fading. Though he's remained in the public eye as a reporter, essayist, and pugnacious critic of women's rights and American foreign policy, his Pulitzer-finalist magnum opus on World War II is two decades behind him. And on the home front, his second wife, Penny, has just left him, prompting him to engage in unseemly stalker-ish behavior. Desperate for some emotional breathing room and a peg for a new book, he takes an offer to head to Vietnam and report on the United States' incipient extraction from the war there. But his enthusiasm for combat reporting is behind him; he's more comfortable staying in his Saigon hotel, where he mansplains journalism to a female colleague who's more industrious than he is and attempts to rekindle a relationship with an old flame. Gilvarry is plainly unsympathetic to Alan's self-inflicted plights; his preening recalls Norman Mailer during his most macho know-it-all moments. (A rival's wife gives Alan what-for when he dismisses women writers: "To you they are all girls, aren't they? Waiting for a man like yourself, a pig of a man.") But because Gilvarry is inclined neither to lionize nor openly satirize his protagonist, the novel has a flat affect, delivering a straightforward brand of realism that puts Alan's misogyny and sense of entitlement in the context of their time but does less to dive deep into their psychological roots or their consequences. There are signs of comeuppance in the closing pages, but of a wan sort, and Alan is a hard man to root for throughout, even in a hate-read sort of way. A persuasive glimpse of the world of early-1970s publishing and journalism, but it lacks much of a message to deliver about it.
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March 15, 2017
Gilvarry debuted brilliantly with From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, a Bookspan Best New Voice and Barnes & Noble Discover pick that saw him named one of the National Book Foundation's 5 under 35. He returns with the story of Alan Eastman, a has-been war journalist regretting the indiscretions that drove away his wife. In 1973, an invitation to return to Vietnam and chronicle the ending of the war thrills him with the promise of renewed glory, but he just brings his problems with him.
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