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    In Country
    In Country
    In Country
    Audiobook9 hours

    In Country

    Written by Bobbie Ann Mason

    Narrated by Jill Brennan

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In the summer of 1984, the war in Vietnam came home to Sam Hughes, whosefather was killed there before she was born. The soldier-boy in the picture never changed. In a way that made him dependable. But he seemed so innocent. ""Astronauts have been to the moon,"" she blurted out to the picture. ""You missed Watergate. I was in the second grade.""

    She stared at the picture, squinting her eyes, as if she expected it to cometo life. But Dwayne had died with his secrets. Emmett was walking around with his. Anyone who survived Vietnam seemed to regard it as something personal andembarrassing. Granddad had said they were embarrassed that they were still alive. ""I guess you're not embarrassed,"" she said to the picture.

    This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMay 3, 2011
    ISBN9780062093905
    In Country
    Author

    Bobbie Ann Mason

    Bobbie Ann Mason is the author of a number of works of fiction, including The Girl in the Blue Beret, In Country, An Atomic Romance, and Nancy Culpepper. The groundbreaking Shiloh and Other Stories won the PEN Hemingway Award and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award, and the PEN Faulkner Award. Her memoir, Clear Springs, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won two Southern Book Awards and numerous other prizes, including the O. Henry and the Pushcart. Former writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky, she lives in Kentucky.

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    Reviews for In Country

    3.5/5

    145 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This book started my research on Vietnam. It was sad and amazing and interesting. As were the rest of the books on the topic.
    • 3/5
      Pretty good novel about a Vietnam vet trying to adjust back home and his sister.
    • 3/5
      Found record that I read this during a lost summer. I don't recall any aspect of the novel.
    • 4/5
      Mason's major novel concerns a high school senior named Samantha whose father died very young in Viet Nam, never having seen his infant daughter. Samantha's mother has recently fled small-town Kentucky after mothering her own brother, an alienated Viet Nam vet, for many years. Sam now lives with this unfortunate uncle and attempts to fill her mother's vacated shoes.

      Most of the book is devoted to Sam's efforts at getting any- and everyone around her to open up about the war experience. These passages are moving and effective. The final 30 pages seemed to me a bit forced as we move toward a crisis/gestalt moment in which Sam attempts to relive a semblance of her father's wartime experience. Nonetheless, I liked the shifty narrative, combining 3rd- and 1st-person points of view. I felt this brought the characters to life in an unusual way.
    • 4/5
      In Country is deceivingly simple. The language is so straightforward and uncomplicated you think it was originally written for children. Here's the scoop: 17-year-old Sam acts obsessed with the Vietnam War. She lives with her vet uncle and pesters him daily about the possibility of Agent Orange reeking havoc with his health. He has bad acne on his face and strange headaches. Despite having a boyfriend her own age Sam also starts to fall in love with a local mechanic, another vet. To the average witness Sam's fixation with all things Vietnam is borderline mania, but Sam has good reason. The father she never knew was lost in the war. He died when she was only two months old. He never came home. No one knows very much about him and if they do they aren't saying much. As a result Sam feels her entire existence is shrouded in mystery. After being rejected by the vet and reading her father's journal Sam decides she needs a change of pace. She loads her uncle and paternal grandmother in her clunker car and travels from Kentucky to Washington D.C., to The Wall. There the entire family finds some sort of closure.
    • 3/5
      Pretty good novel about a girl and her Vietnam vet uncle.
    • 5/5
      rife with symbolism, this is quite a literary work; it will probably make you cry and it will probably make you angry but that's a good thing; it is all that great literature should be and among the best in the vietnam lit canon
    • 3/5
      I found this a relatively quick and interesting read. You can't help but feel the aimlessness, of the Vietnam war, the veteran life, and the way those two things impacted other lives for years afterwards.