Customer Comments

Lee Kissick has commented on (5) products.

After This: A Novel by Alice McDermott

Lee Kissick, February 21, 2011

I wouldn't have guessed that such a spare book could so thoroughly evoke a 20-yr interval. I admire that McDermott cleverly spent little text on the more flagrant cliches of the times (e.g., a son lost in Nam, drug use) that would have overcolored and diminished the story. The vignettes were perfectly spaced in time and cohered wonderously. The characters emerged fully detailed and credible although darned if I can find anywhere that McDermott wasted space elaborating their personal traits. The players just emerged very naturally. Didn't expect to enjoy this so much ... I'll hunt down more of her novels.

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Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes

Lee Kissick, September 8, 2010

Matterhorn effectively establishes that war is an essential human enterprise, a complex and contradictory cultural thing. Karlanthes describes the tedium, humanity, craftsmanship, horror, and glory of combat convincingly. In my bookcase, Matterhorn will stand well next to another masterwork, James Jones' The Thin Red Line.

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Tecumseh: A Life by John Sugden

lee kissick, February 19, 2008

This was a very impressive accomplishment. Sugden employed a thorough array of sources to document a man whose history is not well documented. The speculations in the absence of details seem reasonable and the minimum needed to advance the biography. I imagine this work will set some type of standard for reconstructing the histories of a people lacking written records. He brought in enough local color to make me miss growing up in Ohio, too.

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Sacred Games

lee kissick, February 19, 2008

A good read. I enjoyed the ample details and backstory provided to delineate a country I have never tried hard enough to understand previously. Some of the plot was embarrassingly simplistic (the romance between Sardjay and the Christian was crude and silly as any Bollywood production). But, jeez, I was unable to put it aside for more than a day. I didn't read it in a sitting or 2, but I was eager to resume the story daily. Best of all, like all good fiction, it helped define a real place and its history better than a non-fictional work could have. I have missed big, fun novels like this.

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(2 of 4 readers found this comment helpful)

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Sacred Games: A Novel by Vikram Chandra

lee kissick, February 10, 2008

A good read. I enjoyed the ample details and backstory provided to delineate a country I have never tried hard enough to understand previously. Some of the plot was embarrassingly simplistic (the romance between Sardjay and the Christian was crude and silly as any Bollywood production). But, jeez, I was unable to put it aside for more than a day. I didn't read it in a sitting or 2, but I was eager to resume the story daily. Best of all, like all good fiction, it helped define a real place and its history better than a non-fictional work could have. I have missed big, fun novels like this.

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(7 of 16 readers found this comment helpful)

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