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Unger, Douglas ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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Unger, Douglas El Yanqui
New York HarperCollins 1986 0060156457 / 9780060156459 Y Hardcover N
From Publishers Weekly In 1969, the narrator (the titular Yanqui) is snatched from his accustomed ways as a quasi-hippie in his Long Island town and his chosen scene in the East Village and deposited as an exchange student in Buenos Aires. Ensconced as the overindulged &doublequote;son&doublequote; of a wealthy lawyer and his wife in a lavish home, he lives the life of the Argentinian rich, carousing, drinking, making a pass at a pretty servant girl, wrecking the family carand incidentally attending a Catholic school lorded over by a corrupt priest who represents the rigid, oppressive society of social privilege. The terrorist junta is in power, and relatively enlightened people are Peronistas in sympathy. The boy himself gets caught up in a protest demonstration and is detained and beaten by the police, while a girl he fancies &doublequote;disappears.&doublequote; There is certainly a powerful subject here, but it is nearly drowned by voluminous detail, needless excursions and digressions, commonplace observation and surprisingly pedestrian prose. The author of the well-received Leaving the Land has imagination and narrative energy, but they misfire in this novel. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Coming after his well-received first novel, Leaving the Land , Unger's El Yanqui is a bit of a letdown. The setting is Argentina in the late 1960s, and the political unrest there is paralleled to unrest in the United States during the same period. &doublequote;El Yanqui&doublequote; is an exchange student from Long Island who leaves behind his aimless Sixties lifestyle to enjoy the benefits of a new country, a wealthy family, and good friends. But his new life comes to an end as his escapades in Argentina culminate in arrest for political reasons and his brother Harry returns home from Vietnam psychologically scarred. There's a good novel in here and a &doublequote;telling&doublequote; one at that, but it's a bit overwritten; the first-person prose sparkles in places, but too often excessive descriptive passages slow the book's pace. Recommended for larger public libraries. Thomas Lavoie, formerly with English Dept., Syracuse Univ., N.Y. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Price:
9.00 USD
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Unger, Douglas The Turkey War
New York HarperCollins 1988 0060159510 / 9780060159511 Y Hardcover N
From Publishers Weekly Set in a South Dakota turkey-processing plant manned by German POWs during WW II, this gritty novel pits workaholic plant foreman Mose Johnson against dignified ex-Africa Korps officer Hauptmann von Ujath, who commands total devotion from fellow prisoners. Unger, who explored this general locale in his first novel, Leaving the Land , clearly wants readers to see that not all Germans were Nazis and that POWs on U.S. soil were badly treated. But we never get to know these man well enough as individuals to feel much sympathy for them, despite Unger's graphic portrayal of the horrible milieu: impossible quotas leading to assembly-line speedups, bloody accidents and filthy working conditions. The novel's vantage point is certainly different, but Mose's earth-mother girlfriend, his moneybags boss Buster Hill and the ultimate outcome of the POWs work slowdown are predictable fare. Not for the squeamish, the story tells you everything you would ever think to ask about turkey raising and slaughtering. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. The Dallas Morning News, January 15, 1989 &doublequote;Does for ... home-front America what The Grapes of Wrath did for the Depression. It makes it achingly familiar.&doublequote;
Price:
13.00 USD
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