My Father's War: A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: the real story
Review: At first, I could only read this book in bits at bedtime, but by the time I hit chapter four, I could no longer put it down and finished it in the middle of the night. I wept long and hard. Sadness and overwhelming joy. Ms. Collins - no, Julia - thank you for having the courage to share your story with us and for telling it so even-handedly. I felt like my grandfather, a storyteller whose quiet voice used to gather amazingly large crowds, was telling a tale of that Great Generation, of the tribulations faced not just a war but at home. And I feel sorry for anyone who has not heard this tale of yours and had the chance to share its epiphanies. Thank you again.

Rating:
Summary: Shedding a different light on the Greatest Generation
Review: Collins' moving memoir of her battle-scarred father offers readers a window into the lives of vets after the fighting is over, and the battles that emerged on the homefront. It's as much a story of the author's father, Jeremiah Collins--Yale student-turned soldier-turned salesman, as it is the writer's own. With painstaking honesty and powerful imagery, Collins paints a portrait of small town America in the grips of post-World War II boosterism. Some of the pictures aren't pretty, but Collins, a gifted writer, manages to move the reader through those passages and take them to a place of solace and closure.

Rating:
Summary: the real story
Review: I hated this book, and as I read it I found myself increasingly angry with Julia Collins, the author. I picked it up presuming that it would be the story of how war destroyed a man, an ordinary, representative guy in the street, thereby shedding light on the horrible way in which violence continues to brutalize even after the shooting stops. I anticipated something along the lines of J. Glenn Gray's *The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle.* At the very least, given that the subject of the book was the author's father, I expected a sensitive treatment.

But I'm afraid that my overall impression is one of opportunism. Collins is furious with her father because his haunting memories of WWII blemished her childhood. In an attempt to purge herself of her anger, she publishes letters he wrote from the Pacific Theater, letters so intensely personal that the reader feels a certain embarrassment in reading them. This turning her father into a public spectacle, parading his demons for all the world to see, seems to offer Collins some kind of therapy, allowing her to come to terms with her father for "wrecking" her childhood. It also, incidentally, allows her to write a book and make some money by cashing in on her father's tormented life. What a daughter.

There is no broader message in this book about war or the way violence shatters lives. This is simply a National Inquirer confessional--"Papa Dearest," if you will, made respectable by the daughter's rather tiresome earnestness. Give it a miss.

Rating:
Summary: Could not put it down
Review: I read this book over a period of three days while nursing my baby; I could not put it down. it rings so true, I could even imagine Jerry's voice singing those old big band tunes and improvising those bedtime stories for "the girls" as he tried to keep his nocturnal memories at bay. He sounds like a true Irishman, that heartbreaking combination of humor and melancholy. For personal reasons too complex to describe, I am very grateful for this book and for its courageous author, who revealed as much of herself as of her haunted father. I will read it many times.

Rating:
Summary: a quietly gripping and brave story
Review: Julia,
Before anything else, I must thank you for writing this book.
There is a certain all-American, old-fashioned, no-nonsense style in your writing that rings true of the entire (pre-)war generation, and which most people nowadays have lost. My grandfather had it, and I imagine you, just like him, in a typical scenario, telling family members at a restaurant table a WWII story - and finding every table around straining to listen to your quiet, steady voice as the tale draws in everyone within earshot. I greatly enjoyed finding this quality again, in your writing.
I am amazedd at the incredible harmony you struck in telling two stories simultaneously, yours and your father's (punctuated by song quotations).
_My Father's War_ reminds me of Ursula K. LeGuin's _The Dispossed_, which also alternates between near past and more distant past until the two paths finish in the present.
Thank you. Writing this book was a brave and very good thing to do.
David

Rating:
Summary: Enduring Love
Review: Some years ago, during an annual pilgrimage to Branford, CT to pay my respects to a lost loved-one, I noticed a gravestone adorned with shell offerings in St. Agnes Cemetery. Knowing of my Branford connection, an old friend recommended this book, which reveals that these shells were left by the author, Julia Mary Collins, at the grave of her father, Jeremiah Collins.

The author evokes the deep roots of her family in Branford, a coastal New England town that was in the autumn of its economic prime, yet still suffused with the natural beauties of sea and shore, and sustained by family trees and traditions. Despite a childhood tempered by the Great Depression and fading family fortunes, Jeremiah Collins nonetheless believed in a brighter future and a share of the American Dream.

His aspirations, along with his innocence and idealism, perished in the fiery crucible of the battle for the Pacific Island of Okinawa, in which over 250,000 soldiers and civilians perished. Cast adrift with his altered worldview and survivor's guilt in his unchanged hometown of Branford, Corporal Collins existed in a tenuous state of suspension between the still living and the dead.

The author, who became her father's confidante, perceptively and movingly captures his physical anguish and psychic pain, as well as its lasting impact on her family. Her book serves as a deeply human counterweight to the sea of books that celebrate the triumphs of WWII, but assiduously avoid the incalculable costs for "the greatest generation."

Julia Collins writes "let me bring back my dad, the way he was when I was seven, just before I began to lose him for good." She has not only resurrected her father, she has delivered the eloquent eulogy he deserves, and has gently and lovingly laid him and his anguish to rest, finally at peace in the earth of his native Branford.

The sunbleached shells she leaves at her father's grave, washed ashore from the Atlantic ocean of Jeremiah Collins's childhood, but resonant with the Pacific ocean where he fought his greatest battles, bear silent witness to her enduring love.

Rating:
Summary: No Prisoners Taken
Review: Without 20:20 hindsight or wishful thinking, Julia Collins has written a graceful and moving work that stares straight into the failings of her father as a war hero, breadwinner and parent and somehow manages to elevate and dignify the person her dad was. This challenge made all the more difficult by requiring Jerry Collins to pose for a portrait that in life, he would never have held. “My Father’s War” is not the retelling of one ex-Marine’s pointless miseries but wisdom collected from the perspective of the point-blank battles that raged on the homefront long after the formal surrender of any proclaimed American enemy.

Rating:
Summary: An Ordinary-Dysfunctional American Family
Review: Without 20:20 hindsight or wishful thinking, Julia Collins has written a graceful and moving work that stares straight into the failings of her father as a war hero, husband, breadwinner and parent and somehow manages to elevate and dignify the person her dad was. This challenge made all the more difficult by having Jeremiah Collins pose for a portrait that in life, he would never have held.

“My Father’s War” is not the retelling of one ex-Marine’s pointless miseries but wisdom collected from the perspective of the point-blank battles that raged on the homefront long after the formal surrender of any proclaimed American enemy.