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Title: The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw, James Salter ISBN: 0-226-75129-5 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: October, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: #2
Comment: Characters are often interchangeable in war novels. This is true even in the works of some of the best novelists of the WWII era; including Mailer (Naked and the Dead), Wouk (The Cain Mutiny) and even James Jones (The Thin Red Line). Shaw is able to portray soldiers as true individuals fighting to remain individuals in the framework of the military and a world war. While this novel covers much in the way of history and geography, it is really the story of three very-real and independent men who live in a world that does not value independence.
Rating: 5
Summary: THE ORIGINAL BLOCKBUSTER NOVEL
Comment: Don't be put off by the war setting. This brilliant epic novel revolves around a richly drawn cast of characters - just ordinary people at the onset of the story - and shows how their lives become entwined in the ensuing conflict of WW2. One word of warning, though: James Salter has written a great reflective introduction to this new edition of the classic novel (first published in 1949) but spoils it by giving away the ending of the story and divulging the fate of the three central characters you're supposed to be rooting for over 662 pages! If you haven't read The Young Lions before, then I suggest you skip the introduction and go back to it after you've fininshed the novel.
As for the author: one of America's greatest and most-gifted novelists and short story writers, Irwin Shaw is best remembered for his Rich Man, Poor Man TV mini-series in the 1970s (now available on video). The quality of writing and depth of character in his classic novels is far superior to most of his predecessors today. A groundbreaking pioneer of the big multi-character blockbuster novel, every author who has followed Irwin Shaw - from Stephen King to John Grisham - owes a debt to this literary trailblazer. My favourite novels are The Young Lions; Rich Man, Poor Man; Nightwork; Evening in Byzantium; Two Weeks in Another Town; and the short story collection Five Decades, which contains such gems as 'The Girls in their Summer Dresses' and 'In the French style.'
Try to get your hands on the brilliant biography, Irwin Shaw by Michael Shnayerson, for the full story of this legendary author's life and work.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Best World War II Novel of Its Kind
Comment: And that is saying something, when you put it next to heavyweights like Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" and James Jones' "From Here to Eternity" (postmodern novels like "Catch-22" or "Slaughterhouse Five" are also great, but they exist in a different category altogether, and reflect the spirit of the 1960s much more than that of the 1940s).
Of the James Jones/Norman Mailer-type WWII naturalist/realist epics, Shaw's novel has the most interesting and fully-drawn characters, and "The Young Lions" is easily the most compulsively readable of the them all. You fly through this book, totally gripped by the power of the narrative. It is the kind of novel you sit up late into the wee hours of the morning reading because you can't stop--you want to find out what happens to these characters you begin to care about almost as if they were real people.
"Michael" is a 30-year old screenwriter, who moves about in the superficial Hollywood world, unhappily married and beginning to feel disillusioned with this career.
"Noah" is a shy, rootless Jewish boy who, after a life of wandering with his itinerant father, begins to find love and friendship for the first time.
"Christian" is a young German man who enjoys a carefree but painfully meaningless existence as a ski instructor. He becomes an NCO in the Wehrmacht, seeking transcendence of the mundane in the life of a soldier.
The book opens on New Year's Eve, 1938, and shows each of the three characters in their situations. Events and powerful emotions propel each of them headlong into a nasty, brutal war that will change them forever, and leave only one of them surviving at the end.
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Title: From Here to Eternity by James Jones, James Jones ISBN: 0385333641 Publisher: Dell Publishing Pub. Date: 13 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Naked and the Dead : 50th Anniversary Edition by Norman Mailer ISBN: 0312265050 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 05 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Short Stories: Five Decades by Irwin Shaw ISBN: 0226751287 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Thin Red Line by James Jones ISBN: 0385324081 Publisher: Delta Pub. Date: 09 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Whistle by James Jones ISBN: 0385334249 Publisher: Delta Pub. Date: 08 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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