In Country

Rating:
Summary: It's a great story, but you must be patient, it can be slow.
Review: "In Country," by Bobbie Anne Mason is a great story about a girl that lost her father in the Vietnam War. She lived a wild life without a father. Her mother living nearby, but her, in her late teens, lives with her uncle. She has no discipline, yet gets along well. Her main strugle throughout the book is finding out what Vietnam was really like. She also wants to know what her father was like, since she never even met him. Her uncle, was in the war, but he made it home alive. Sam, the young girl, is worried about her uncle, scared that he has Agent Orange. All she has is him, and she doesn't want to lose him to the war too. All of this takes place in the early 80's. She is dealing with the past, in the future. Some things just never go away. There is so much more to this book, and if you love to read books about Vietnam or even just like to read, then I would recomend this story. It's not too long, and wouldn't take up too much time. Sometimes the book moves rather slowly, and you must be patient with it. The main theme from the book is that things in the past, really do still effect us today.

Rating:
Summary: one of the most important American novels of the century
Review: "In Country" is several books at once: among them, a chronicle of a significant era in American history, a rumination on the evaporation of American regionalism, and a standard coming of age novel. The story revolves around Samantha Hughes,unusually bright and aware for a teenager growing up in a western Kentucky backwater (probably not unlike Bobbie Ann Mason herself). Born in 1966, Sam's father died in Vietnam before she could meet him. When she turns 18, it occurs to her that no one in the family has ever really told her anything about him -- like American society, which wanted to forget about the dirty little war in southeast Asia, her family had more or less swept him under the rug. But Sam decides to go on her own journey to discover who her dad was, and what that senseless conflict might have been about.On her way, Mason weaves a brilliant tapestry of American culture in the mid-1980s, in which cable television and the proliferation of gigantic shopping malls have flattened out distictions between regions and the peculiar quality of rural existence. At the climax of the story, Sam travels to Washington with her beloved uncle and her paternal grandmother to visit the Vietnam memorial; when she finds her own name inscribed on the wall, it hammers home the message that the Vietnam experience is about all of us. "In Country" may have less impact now than before it was published; subsequently, many works of popular culture (the films "Platoon" and "Casualties of War" as well as the television series "China Beach") have carried similar messages. But few have done so as elegantly and compellingly as this book.

Rating:
Summary: It's a great story, but you must be patient, it can be slow.
Review: "In Country," by Bobbie Anne Mason is a great story about a girl that lost her father in the Vietnam War. She lived a wild life without a father. Her mother living nearby, but her, in her late teens, lives with her uncle. She has no discipline, yet gets along well. Her main strugle throughout the book is finding out what Vietnam was really like. She also wants to know what her father was like, since she never even met him. Her uncle, was in the war, but he made it home alive. Sam, the young girl, is worried about her uncle, scared that he has Agent Orange. All she has is him, and she doesn't want to lose him to the war too. All of this takes place in the early 80's. She is dealing with the past, in the future. Some things just never go away. There is so much more to this book, and if you love to read books about Vietnam or even just like to read, then I would recomend this story. It's not too long, and wouldn't take up too much time. Sometimes the book moves rather slowly, and you must be patient with it. The main theme from the book is that things in the past, really do still effect us today.

Rating:
Summary: Stuck in the past, reaching for the future
Review: Ann Mason's great novel, In Country tells the story of a adolescent girl caught in the social confines of the South. The book is an easy read. However, its simplicitly does not cloud or prevent a profound commentary on the confines that Americans feel because of the troubled historical past that many face. If you are an American and feel confined by your environment, you must read this novel, and share your experiences with the central character of this novel, as you learn together.

Rating:
Summary: This book makes no sense!
Review: Bobbie Ann Mason creates characters with which most people cannot identify. This gives little insight (although it claims to give much) into the real Vietnam. It is dull with a horable plot and characters that are simple, uncouth, not dignified in any way, and devoid of any real depth. Why I was required to read this in a college course I will never know. It seems to be liken to the thickness and depth of Judy Blume but with a tone that indicates that it (and the author) takes itself (her work) way too seriously.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: Bobbie Ann Mason's IN COUNTRY is an excellent novel. Mason's well thought plot allows the novel to remain realistic while letting the reader see the main character learn her family's past, and look to the future while trying to find herself in the present. Mason puts a twist on the typical coming of age storyline by adding an unusual inner conflict. Sam Hughes, the main character who is a highschool student, deals with deep feelings for a sexually incapable thiry-something war vet, breaks up with her basketball superstar boyfriend and supports her pregnant bestfriend all at once. Sam spends most of her time trying to understand what really went on in the vietnam war because her uncle and father both served, only, her father never came back. Some parts of the story are repetative but they show her eagerness to know what the vets went through. This book has humor, sadness and can be very intriguing. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for some easy to read material or for a book to laugh at. In Country does just that.

Rating:
Summary: For a teenager, the book was great!
Review: I enjoyed the book very much. Though, it was not one of my favorite books, I did enjoy it. I could relate very much to Sam and her life. Although her life takes place many years back, and she lives a different life than I do, her reactions seem to be very much like mine would. I liked how the book began with the end and then continued from the beginning in the next chapter. I thought it to be very different. I would recomend the book to any teenager, but if you are younger or older, I would say that you may not enjoy it as much and get out of it what I did. It is a book that I will never forget.

Rating:
Summary: Never understood the attraction
Review: I had the "pleasure" of hearing Ms. Mason speak prior to the filming of the movie In Country. She was far too reserved to be an engaging speaker, but the fact that a major motion picture was coming out and that the book was selected for reading at our local high school made me seek it out. What a disappointment. :P

Rating:
Summary: This book was way to drawn out and boring!
Review: I my opinion, this book could have been done and over with in under 150 pages. It was so repetitive. I couldn't help but get bored by it. And the characters. Every character was well developed exept the most important ones. I still to this day have no idea what this sam looks like. I almost stopped reading it part way through. If you into books that are extreamly melodramatic and "boring", than this is your book. Trust me, it's not worth 10 cents more or less 10 dollars!

Rating:
Summary: It had a good effect on me.
Review: I read In Country in 1992. It was an engaging book that treated the characters honestly. The main character Sam is begining to blossom as a person and wants to finally find out more about her father who was killed in Vietnam. It is an interesting novel about how the war affected those who remained at home in rural America, and it's effect on the generation after the war.