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: This is a great book
Review: In Country is a great coming of age novel as well as an anti-war story. Sam, our lead character, has to come to terms with the Vietnam War killing her father, and what he had to do over ther, and seriously messing up her uncle and several other veterans. It is a great story along the lines of The Bell Jar or any other coming of age story. It is good. I highly recommend it. This is Mason at her best.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Terrible, Not Excellent
Review: IN COUNTRY, by Bobbie Ann Mason, is a post-Vietnam story about Sam, who is dealing with the aftermath of her father's death twenty years ago. As Sam faces her future, she has inner troubles to face, which is definitely understandable, especially as her character and myself are close in age. Sam's journey into adulthood looms in the near future, and she must pick a path to get to where she wants to be.
Sam lives with her uncle Emmett, whom she suspects is an Agent Orange victim. Fatherless and emotionally lonely, she tries to fit the pieces of her life into a puzzle, but they just don't seem to fit. With a baby stepbrother, a pregnant best friend, a flea-infested cat, and a small chunk of change, Sam shows the reader how to make the best of life's difficulties and tragedies.
Unfortunately, IN COUNTRY tends to drag on with unnecessary details, and my patience was thinned by the time I had reached the middle of the book. I was tempted to skip pages at some parts, but I decided to read the excess details that have absolutely no significance to the plot and theme.
This book teaches that as we go through hard and confusing times, we will always have a way to find truth and justice. Sam's journey to find her truth was almost like Odysseus trying to get back to Ithaca in the Odyssey- Sam had to overcome the obstacles by tying her best, and with a passion. Sam visits the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. to put the memory of her father at rest inside her soul, and to really feel the impact of the war. Sam learns that life goes on, even is she thinks it won't.
I would reccommend this book for people who like to read about the Vietnam War and the trials young people face in their lives. If you are an impatient person when it comes to books, you may want to avoid this one.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting take on the ramifications of Viet Nam
Review: In light of the way views and attitudes about Viet Nam and Viet Nam vets are slowly changing, it is interesting to read a book written in the early 80's about a girl whose father didn't come back. This is a coming of age novel--both for the girl and her Viet Nam vet uncle. As Sam learns more about the war and her father's part in it, those readers who did not go to war or were not alive at the time, gain a deeper appreciation for the sacrifices and struggles of Viet Nam vets today. There are many interesting juxtapositions of the different kinds of vets, the non-functional to the highly functional. Each carries baggage from that war. But Sam also carries baggage, perhaps the load her father never brought home. Touching and poignant, I enjoyed it tremendously.
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Summary: Mason's Best
Review: Mason's first and most widely known novel, In Country is also her most evocative and enduring work. She captures not only the legacy of Vietnam for a daughter left behind, but also a small-town Kentucky life that's quickly slipping into the past. Perhaps the most nearly perfect representation of teenager caught between her hometown and popular American culture.
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Summary: A fine evocation of the post-Vietnam era
Review: Readers of Nancy Drew (and Bobbie Ann Mason's scholarly analysis of the well-read series of "girl mysteries") will recognize the underlying structure of this wonderful novel about the aftermath of Vietnam. Set in a rural Southern community, the story follows the attempt of its young heroine Sam to solve the mystery of her father, who died before she knew him, a casualty of the war. Meanwhile, her curiosity is piqued by her uncle Emmett who did return from that war, but is still haunted by it and languishes in a kind of noncommunicative and prolonged bout with post traumatic stress. Independent and single-minded, like Nancy, Sam looks for clues and tries to piece them together. There are photographs, letters, and mementos to collect and ponder. Eventually, she tries to simulate the experience of being "in country," spending a night in the swamp, hoping to recreate for herself the fear and bravery of the young soldier far from home who was her father. Finally, it is a family trip to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., that brings them all closer to resolution. And while it may not solve a mystery, or the conundrum of the Vietnam War itself, they are drawn closer to the enigma of human life and the need to honor the past while also letting go of it.
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Summary: Another one about the legacy of Vietnam
Review: Sam Hughes, whose father was killed in Vietnam, lives with her uncle Emmett, a veteran who may be suffering from exposure to Agent Orange. College-aged Sam goes through the usual crises of those her age: picking a college, getting a summer job, breaking up with her high school boyfriend - and then along comes Tom, one of her uncle's friends, and Sam's emotions run up another hill of the roller coaster.
In Country RI carries the legacy of Vietnam into the culture of the 80s and is a beautiful portrait, lovingly rendered, of that era.
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Summary: A Brief Summary
Review: Samantha Hughes is a teenage girl in Kentucky. She was known as Sam. In the story, she was trying to get her uncle Emmett, who she lives with, to talk about the Vietnam War because she became obsessed with getting information about her father and his experiences and how he died. Emmett was Sam's father's brother who also served in the war. Sam never knew her father because when she was born, her father was still in the Vietnam War and had died before her birth. Emmett and his other Army buddies don't want to talk about the war. Sam got her father's diary and she got to read it. Upon reading her father's diary, she found out what his life and death meant. After she finished reading her father's diary, she and her grandma Mawmaw and Emmett took a trip to Washington. They went to the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial and found Sam's father's name on the Wall.
Rating:
Summary: a book i keep coming back to
Review: somehow, "in country" (i have no idea why this lists it as "in country ri" - what the eff is "ri"? it's certainly not on my book cover, nor have i ever seen it listed as that...) anyway, "in country" is a book i constantly find myself thinking of and coming back to. as a girl who first read this book when she was a year younger than the main character sam and last read it when she was a few years older than sam, i can't help but indentify... i think the historical questions, the 80's pop culture, and explicit descriptions of the actuality of every day life are truly amazing... i cry every time i read the book. there's something so desperate and yet so fresh and hopeful about sam hughes. i would recommend this book to anyone, but especially any girl in her late teens, or like me, early twenties.
Rating:
Summary: a book i keep coming back to
Review: somehow, "in country" (i have no idea why this lists it as "in country ri" - what the eff is "ri"? it's certainly not on my book cover, nor have i ever seen it listed as that...) anyway, "in country" is a book i constantly find myself thinking of and coming back to. as a girl who first read this book when she was a year younger than the main character sam and last read it when she was a few years older than sam, i can't help but indentify... i think the historical questions, the 80's pop culture, and explicit descriptions of the actuality of every day life are truly amazing... i cry every time i read the book. there's something so desperate and yet so fresh and hopeful about sam hughes. i would recommend this book to anyone, but especially any girl in her late teens, or like me, early twenties.
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