Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful Delusion of a Generation
Review: Tim O'Brien has done it again! In July, July, O'Brien creates a beautiful range of voices and lives, trapped by their own passions, hopes and the delusions of a generation, whose youth has run itself, nearly, out of gas. At a high school reunion, we see O'Brien's characters dance under cardboard stars in an awkward celebration of times past. The reunion of old friends serves as a catalyst for reliving the year of their college graduation: 1969. The narrative fluxes between present time stories and the tales of old hopes, dreams, loves and lives of these ripened graduates. In the novel, O'Brien's characters (some of whom, like Spoke Spenelli, remain as sassy and sexy as ever, while others find themselves victims of divorce, broken hearts, or a lost leg to the Vietnam War) are as real as each of us, as they explore who they were and who they have become. In July, July the reader finds herself out on their dance floor, amongst the crowd, dancing along with nostalgia. By brilliantly weaving the experiences of these characters lives, O'Brien creates a chorus for a generation who drowned themselves in the sea of cul-de-sacs, housing developments, golf courses and other landmarks of suburban culture. There is no book that better exemplifies the dreams of a generation, so proud and young and hopeful, who lost its innocence to a time of war. This book has moments of pure hilarity and heart wrenching sadness. It is a reflection of another "coming of age," middle age, that leaves the reader walking away with her own reflections on who she is and who she thought she would become. O'Brien is masterful in his prose. In July, July the cast of characters develop a plotline that wraps each of their lives around your very own. An amazing feat. My highest recommendation.
Rating: 
Summary: I know it's not his best, but so what?
Review: Tim O'Brien has one of the toughest jobs in the United States. He has to prove over and over what a great writer he is. After such great books like "The Things They Carried" and "In the Lake of the Woods" readers expectations are high. I thought that "Tomcat In Love" was a good book, but poor Tim had to get trashed by the critics because it didn't live up to his other books. Everyone in Amazon Land: PLEASE STOP THAT!!! Desist from comparisons. It really does an overall disservice.
Now the book:
July, July is a great piece of fiction writing. Plain and simple. Mr. O'Brien is an American icon. His dialog is funny, snappy, realistic, and yet always literary and solid. The plot is slight, but his characters are broad and real. No one writes about the details of relationships better, not to mention the intelligent manner in which he depicts the Vietnam War (or any war for that matter) experience.
Rating:
Summary: Go Ask Alice
Review: Tim O'Brien's "July July" is about how our dreams, hopes and memories are shattered once they take the inescapable road through reality, experience and just plain living.
It tells the story of the graduating class of 1969 of Darton Hall College in two time periods: both in 1969 and at their class reunion in 2000.
1969 was a year of discontent in America as the euphoria of "The Summer of Love, 1967" was fading and Vietnam was looming larger and larger in the country's collective mind. 1969 was also the year that we lost two of our pop icons: Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. So the graduates of 1969 were less inclined to look to the future with unguarded hope for they would be going into a slightly smudged and tainted world: desperately clutching onto their dreams and cautiously, even warily walking toward their adulthood.
Even though for the bulk of the novel, O'Brien adopts a very straightforward, almost reporter-like style of prose, when he writes of one character, Spook Spinelli, who has two husbands, (!) he opens up with admiration and a kind of wonder: "They were intelligent, open-minded children of the sixties. There was almost no contention. Initially, to be sure, Lincoln had articulated some displeasure at Spook's desire for a second husband, yet he adored her and realized that the alternative was to lose a wife he cared for. Just as important, and much to his credit, Lincoln understood that relationships require fine-tuning, that Spook loved him no less, and that he wasn't losing a wife but gaining an in-law."
Tim O'Brien has written a novel and created characters that personify the regret of and the yearning for a time when their most difficult choice was whether to wear the red or the green Izod shirt,the brown or black shoes or who to call for Pizza. Then Life happens to them.
Rating: 
Summary: The class of '69, still coming undone....
Review: Tim O'Brien's "July, July" introduces us to an ensemble cast as it is gathering for its thirty-year class reunion at Minnesota's "Darton Hall College." As one would expect in such a "Big Chill" scenario, the past filters through the intervening years and makes its presence felt in the newly fifty-something crowd. Thus, the angst of the younger set facing combat is juxtaposed with the anxiety of the older set facing the physical and philosophical challenges of aging. However, the interplay among these ten people becomes a rather confusing emotional mish-mash, itself complicated by O'Brien's attempt to give voice to the entire multi-hued American scene from 1969 to 2000. (Yes, the 30th reunion is actually being held in the 31st year, an inside joke regarding the mental health of the event organizer.) O'Brien over-reaches here, both in trying to cover all socio-political attitudes of the late '60's, and in trying to develop convincing female characters. The author's expected narrative strength, given his earlier Vietnam tales' critical successes, lies with his telling of a single 'Nam event which persists in its nightmarish haunting of the present through an on-going series of flashbacks. All the rest seems somewhat superficial and only incidentally included. This sense is fueled by the gang's over-indulgences: too much drinking, some curiously dated hallucinogen use (unconvincingly described,) and the over-arching collective libido of these basically disappointed and disappointing group of alums. As such, the entire event comes off as a disjointed gala. Perhaps this is the author's narrative intent, to drop us - inebriated -- in media res, with all the revelers. It worked for F Scott Fitzgerald in "The Great Gatsby," so why not? Particularly, given the clearly echoed sense and style of both Hemingway and Fitz. (In fact, at times I was expecting footnotes citing "The Sun Also Rises" and "Gatsby.") Bottom line: Given O'Brien's litany of awards and decades of praise, I was expecting more. Yes, I finished it, but it is nowhere near being one of the page turners of his repute.
Rating:
Summary: Really good, but not as good as The Things They Carried
Review: Well, I know the NYT reviewed panned it and nobody is going to go around saying it's Tim O'Brien's best novel. I mean, after he wrote The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods, it must be tough for the poor guy to compete with himself.
But if he hadn't written those books, if this was the first thing he'd written, I'd have given it 5 stars.
July, July has a big cast of characters, a group of college graduates returning for their 30th reunion, and the characters intermix and mingle as people will during a reunion weekend, making it sometimes difficult to keep track of who's who.
Inserting pivotal tales from Julys past, O'Brien give us wonderful explorations of universal themes in this daring novel: hope, love, disappointment, despair, and of course the Vietnam War.
A couple of chapters from July, July appeared as separate short stories in The New Yorker, and they work well in that way, especially the bittersweet and tragically funny story of Dorothy confronting her husband's discomfort regarding her mastectomy by getting plastered and walking topless toward him down the driveway. The reaction of her elderly next-door neighbor is masterful. Utterly priceless.
The book is a testament to the entire generation of us who grew up in the long shadow of Vietnam.
Rating:
Summary: More Good Stuff From Tim O'Brien
Review: When Tim O'Brien burst onto the scene a decade or more ago with his collection of stories, The Things They Carried, it was clear America had a literate and intelligent documenter of the War in Vietnam. The title story of that collection in particular was stunning, a beatifully written and highly evocative piece about violence and death. Since then O'Brien has continued to produce terrific books. Their qualities are deep senstivity and muscular prose. In The Lake of the Woods and After Cacciato have been followed now by July, July, a good book about graduates of a college who meet thirty years after graduation and stir up fears and desires long suppressed but never quite buried. In important ways their stories mirror the plight of America at the start of the new millennium. It's a delightful novel, worth reading, as is all of O'Brien's stuff. It maybe just can never quite measure up to impact of The Things They Carried.
Rating:
Summary: FUNNY AND POIGNANT - GREAT READING!
Review: When Tim O'Brien postponed graduate work at Harvard to serve in Vietnam, surely, he had no idea that he would one day become America's preeminent chronicler of those war years and garner a National Book Award. His prose is both brilliant and courageous. With the funny and poignant "July, July" O'Brien returns to the era that so shapes his writing, but this time rather than focusing on the soldiers he spotlights those who were left behind. When asked about his emphasis on female characters in his latest work, the author replied, "....in part it was a technical challenge, to prove to myself that I could do it, that as a writer I could portray convincing, detailed, intelligent, compelling women. More important, it seemed to me that most of the fiction set in the watershed era of the late 1960s focuses on stories about men - the pressures of war, draft-dodging, and so on. But for every man who went to Vietnam, or for every man who went to Canada, there were countless sisters and girlfriends and wives and mothers, each of whom had her own fascinating story, her own tragedies and suffering, her own healing afterward....." With "July, July" we meet many of these women at the thirtieth reunion of Minnesota's Darton Hall College class of 1969. Ten old friends meet again for a weekend in July to reminisce, drink, and rue what might have been Much has happened in the past three decades; , careers have flourished and floundered, children have been born, and marriages made in heaven have ended in hell. It seems fitting that Jan Huebner and Amy Robinson toast their exes with vodka and hope for better days. Dorothy Stier, a wealthy Reagan Republican is recovering from a radical mastectomy and her 30-year-old decision to let draft dodger Billy McMann wend his way to Winnipeg alone. Even with two husbands Spook Spinelli is still on the prowl and sets her failing sight on a tubby rich man with a weak heart. Other riveting characters charm and disarm, while Johnny Ever, perhaps an angel, always hovers. He is there to {pick} consciences and remind, as O'Brien has said, "I'm not sure if Johnny is an angel or a devil or a voice of conscience or just a weird metaphysical middleman. But yes, Johnny is meant to lift the story out of time, to remind both the characters and the reader that human beings have gone through certain universal troubles and joys throughout history, and to remind us of those abiding mysteries and unknown that envelop all of human experience." Tim O'Brien has crafted an incandescent novel penned with astounding insight and unforgettable power. - Gail Cooke
Rating: 
Summary: Totally unrealistic
Review: While there are always a few shallow and uncreative people who hold on to past grudges and longings with a vengeance, after thirty years most people, even average folks, get on with their lives and learn a little bit . The rampant cynicism and narcissism and obsession with the past in all of O'Brien's characters just comes off as contrived and unrealistic. It made the book predictable and boring, seeming to be more a therapeutic exercise for the author's own demons than an exploration of the experiences of this age group.
Rating: 
Summary: Plot, anyone?
Review: Yes, Tim O'Brian is certainly a very good writer... his command of the language, his characterizations, narrative, dialogue, etc. Unfortunately, I expected a lot more when I bought this book. It's an interesting slice-of-life, made better by some interesting characters and scenes. But what else? I didn't expect a rock-em sock-em thriller - I expected a story that has a beginning, middle, and end. He gave us the beginning, but the middle just went on and on, all the way to the last page.
|
