War & Military Fiction, Humorous Fiction

Slow Walk in a Sad Rain

Name: Slow Walk in a Sad Rain
Author: John P. McAfee
ISBN: 9780446516426

by John P. McAfee

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Overview

Slow Walk in a Sad Rain is already being hailed as the Catch-22 of the Vietnam War. Based on the author's own experiences as a combat Green Beret, this poignant, darkly comic debut novel establishes John P. McAfee as an extraordinary new voice in wartime fiction. The story begins in Special Forces A Camp, number 134, twenty miles above Moc Hoa and less than a mile from the Cambodian border. The camp's Green Berets, dividing their time between boredom and terror, are ostensibly led by a captain (and the narrator). But the officer actually takes his cue from an aggressive sergeant named Shotgun who is alternately crazy and wise, but always irresistibly, frighteningly dangerous. The altogether appropriate motto of A Camp is "Normal is a cycle on a washing machine." Commanding officers issue orders that have no meaning. Weapons are used in ways that are the grotesque opposite of their original design. And in an experience that has a real-life counterpart, the Green Berets stumble on a shocking alliance between the CIA and North Vietnam, something they realize they must destroy - even at the cost of bringing both sides down on them. The first novel to explore the nightmarishly absurd underside of America's clandestine operations in Vietnam, Slow Walk in a Sad Rain ranks as one of the most powerful transmutations of personal experience into dramatic fiction.

In the style of quality war fiction like Catch-22, this critically acclaimed, poignant, and powerful first novel is based largely on the author's own experiences as a combat veteran of the Vietnam war. "McAfee has turned the standard war novel upside down."--Los Angeles Times. Compares with quality war fiction such as Catch-22.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this grimly sardonic but strained and only episodically effective first novel about the Vietnam War by a decorated 'Nam veteran, an unnamed American Army captain narrates the story of an infantry unit based in a reconnaissance post near the Laotion border. Although he is nominally in command, the outfit is in effect led by a brutal sergeant called ``Shotgun,'' who serves as an all-purpose scout-sapper-killer. While McAfee invests heavily in irony, his approach could not be less subtle. He writes in a terse, telegraphic series of sentences and one-sentence paragraphs that are obviously intended to drive home any gruesome jokes or conclusions readers may have missed. Shotgun emerges as a cartoon figure in a savage story; the key enlisted men in the outfit, ``Quiet Voice'' and Spec. 7 Thompson, are puppets in his hands. The novel's key event is the arrival of Col. Basshorn, who orders the small unit on a mission into Laos, where the soldiers encounter Vietcong (although rarely), CIA operatives and drug smugglers as well as blood flukes and other repulsive creatures. McAfee furnishes some vivid description of the Mekong River and its tributaries, and his expository information about armaments is often interesting. Unfortunately, the story never emerges from the screen of nicknames that objectify the chief characters and the black humor that constitutes the book's chief tone. (Feb.)