Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel
    From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel
    From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel

    Written by Alex Gilvarry

    Narrated by Ramón de Ocampo and Corey Allen

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Norman Mailer Fellow Alex Gilvarry delivers a witty satirical gem with his debut novel From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant. Boyet Hernandez aspires to be a high-end fashion designer. But the night before he's set to make it big, he hears a knock on his door. Shortly after, he finds himself in a Gitmo prison cell-locked up as a suspect in a deadly terrorist plot.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJan 12, 2012
    ISBN9781464008207
    From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel

    Related to From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant

    Related audiobooks

    Satire For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant

    4/5

    35 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant is a hip, satirical novel about a young Filipino designer of women's wear who comes to New York hoping to make it big and gets caught up in the post-9/11 paranoia and ends up being sent to "No Man's Land" as a suspected terrorist. Although it's a very clever book it made me reflective and a bit sad -- too much so to make me laugh. It's worth a read though.
    • 4/5
      Fast, funny, yet ultimately sobering read.
    • 3/5
      Don't let the title fool you, this is indeed fiction, but it is written as a memoir, expertly blending the story of both Boy's rise to fame and his time as a prisoner.
    • 5/5
      Alex Gilvarry has written an absolutely brilliant and entertaining novel. The premise is so outlandish – he combines a humorous satirical look at the fashion industry with eye-opening insights into the way “detainees” are treated at Guantanamo Prison. It doesn’t seem possible that these two storylines could be joined together in an interesting and compelling way, but Gilvarry does it. The book is written as the confession of Boy Hernandez, a Filipino immigrant with dreams of becoming a world famous designer. For most of the book, we learn of Boy’s journey from a Manila fashion school, where he was the second best student to a rival who hit the big time fast, to the streets of New York, where he arrives nearly penniless but dreams of the day when he’ll be able to showcase his own designs during Fashion Week at Bryant Park. When he stumbles upon a neighbor who offers to bankroll his ambitions, he willfully keeps a blind eye to that man’s shady business dealings. When his new partner, Ahmed, turns out to be an arms dealer, Boy, gets caught up in the post 911 paranoia and ends up in Guantanamo and has to write this confession to try to prove his innocence. Gilvarry’s portrayal of a designer’s mind – the way he looks at clothes, the way he brainstorms new ideas, and all the connections he has to leverage to make inroads into the business are fascinatingly portrayed. You learn a lot about how clothing designers think and develop their ideas. And Boy’s voice is so wonderfully unique. He has a humorously fragile ego – with all of his petty jealousies with his rivals are right at the forefront – but then he turns into a powerful voice of innocent victims as he describes the brutal and unforgiving ways that prisoners are treated by the government when fear provides them with the justifications to ignore the guidelines for humane treatment set forth by the Constitution and Geneva Convention. This book is so unique and so entertaining, I highly recommend it.
    • 4/5
      This is a bit out of my normal range of reading. This is not just because I have been reading so much YA literature, but also because I generally try to avoid anything political. However, when I got an offer to review this book, I took it, since who doesn't love a free book. Besides, it's always (note: this is hyperbole) good to push your boundaries and leave your comfort zone. I am so glad I did.

      From the first, I loved this book. Boy has such a clear strong voice and a wonderful sense of humor, despite the darkness of many sections of the story. The bulk of the book is his confession to his interrogators, alternating between his current thoughts at the time and his memories of events in roughly chronological order. There are also humorous footnotes here and there that contain a fashion magazine writer's notes on what Boy got wrong in his statement.

      From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant is like Ugly Betty meets Little Brother. What makes everything in this book so painful, and not just because you're laughing so hard at the dark humor, is that it is believable. I can totally imagine our government mistakenly ruining an innocent man's life and never owning up to their errors.

      This is a most excellent read that I recommend highly to those who fear our country may be turning into a dystopia, who love black comedy, or adore high fashion.
    • 4/5
      Fast, funny, yet ultimately sobering read.
    • 4/5
      If you like Gary Shytengart (sp?) you'll like Alex Gillvary. Absurd, witty, funny, with a underlying theme. Wonderfully written, unique and highly entertaining. I recommend this book highly.
    • 3/5
      When Boyet "Boy" Hernandez moves to New York City from his native Phillippines, he's certain he's entered the land of opportunity. Boy, who has a passion and a talent for designing women's clothing, knows the only place to hit it big is in New York. His dreams are filled with Bryant Park's Fashion Week tents, and he's more than eager to get down to making a splash in the New York fashion scene. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as it looks. Finances exile Boy to Bushwick rather than the hipper Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, and Boy is left to labor on his line in obscurity until he makes the acquaintance of his sketchy downstairs neighbor. Ahmed Qureshi spends his time at home clad in a dishdasha and aqua shoes, but he's an important fabric importer who wants suits that will make a splash in society, and he thinks Boy is just the one to produce them. From then on, despite some reservations about Ahmed's character, the two are in business together. Little does Boy know that his naive willingness to adopt Ahmed as the chief investor for his women's fashion line will eventually land him in a world of trouble. Gilvarry's novel takes place in the wildly paranoid post-9/11 world. With Guantanamo Bay slurping up would-be terrorists indiscriminately, and the Patriot Act making it easy and legal to monitor even the most innocent of conversation and correspondence, Gilvarry's entertaining satire featuring the hapless Boy is both ridiculous, yet not so far from the truth about the United States in the wake of the attacks. In Boy, Gilvarry has created a unique character that plays perfectly in his tale. Boy, an adamantly straight women's fashion designer, is so single-minded in pursuit of his dreams that he's willing to believe with only fleeting doubts that the fast-talking Ahmed really just is a Canadian businessman with all the right connections. Boy, who thinks that a fertilizer bomb sounds like something made up, hardly blinks an eye at Ahmed's apartment filled to the brim with the stuff until he finds himself detained at Guantanamo Bay for his association with terroristic activities. Ahmed is obviously trouble but then, he is also an enthusiastic, charismatic and most entertaining terrorist who drives around in a ZipCar (a Toyota Prius to be exact), makes paninis for lunch, and dishes about his home in Nova Scotia where the sun stays up for six months at a time and everyone comes out of their huts and igloos to watch it go down before their six months of night. Ludicrous? Maybe. Hilariously incongruous? Definitely. Twisted though it may be, if I had to name my very favorite part of the book, it would most likely be Ahmed and his antics. From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant (FtMoaNEC) is a smart, funny, and vaguely frightening picture of the post-9/11 U.S. where an agent named Ben Laden, an apartment with a storage area turned bedroom called a "sleeper cell," and a liason with a guy who's making a deal with the ASPCA seem harmless enough but are enough to put an innocent away in Guantanamo Bay. Admittedly, the book drags a little through the parts where Boy laments his unfortunate detention, and it seems as if Gilvarry is trying to add drama where no drama needs added, but the parts where Boy recounts what led him to this unfortunate turn of events really pop. At the end of the day, though, FtMoaNEC evokes and harpoons the Big Brother-esque age of the Patriot Act so well that the very act of posting this review, chock full of buzz words like terrorist, Guantanamo Bay, and fertilizer; seems like an act of bravery.