Flashback Friday: The Hunt For Red October

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight — and you’re invited to join in!

Here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

Other than that, the sky’s the limit! Join me, please, and let us all know: what are the books you’ve read that you always rave about? What books from your past do you wish EVERYONE would read? Pick something from five years ago, or go all the way back to the Canterbury Tales if you want. It’s Flashback Friday time!

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy

(published 1984)

Please don’t think I’m a military fanatic! I realize that this is my second week in a row picking a Flashback Friday book with a naval/military setting. I was originally going to go in a completely different direction this week, but in light of the sad news about Tom Clancy’s passing, I thought I’d highlight his very first book, The Hunt for Red October:

From Goodreads:

Somewhere under the Atlantic, a Soviet sub commander has just made a fateful decision. The Red October is heading west.

The Americans want her. The Russians want her back. And the most incredible chase in history is on …

Here is the runaway bestseller that launched Tom Clancy’s phenomenal career. A military thriller so accurate and so convincing in its accuracy that the author was rumored to have been debriefed by the White House. Its theme: The greatest espionage coup in history. Its story: The chase for a top secret Russian missile sub. Its title: THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER

According to the Wikipedia page, Tom Clancy originally sold The Hunt for Red October to the Naval Institute Press for $5,000. The Naval Institute Press’s first published original fiction work, The Hunt for Red October leaped onto the bestseller lists when President Reagan mentioned it during a press conference and said that he couldn’t put it down.

The Hunt for Red October was hugely popular, fitting right in with the Cold War era and the mood of distrust between the US and USSR. Red October was perhaps the first (and certainly most prominent) book of the time to focus not just on plot but on military hardware — to such an extent that it supposedly had the military intelligence community in quite a tizzy over the amount of sensitive information contained within the book.

Admittedly, this is a somewhat strange selection for me, as I don’t typically read thrillers, much less military thrillers with lots of technical jargon and big things going boom. But at the time, I found it fascinating, and learned a huge amount about life on board submarines, what a sonar array is, and how all that underwater listening actually works. Plus, it’s a tense, compelling story — so yes, I’d have to agree with President Reagan on this one: Hard to put down!

I promise to move on to more “literary” selections next week for Flashback Friday. But consider this one a tribute to a man who was a huge influence in the world of popular fiction. Even though it’s been years since I’ve had the slightest interest in reading a Tom Clancy book, I’m still happy to acknowledge that this was an author who knew his audience and knew how to tell a story. RIP, Tom Clancy.

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Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I’m building a Book Blog Meme Directory, and need your help! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!

26Sep2013

Flashback Friday: The Caine Mutiny

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight — and you’re invited to join in!

Here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

(published 1951)

From Goodreads:

The novel that inspired the now-classic film The Caine Mutiny and the hit Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, Herman Wouk’s boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining novel of life — and mutiny — on a Navy warship in the Pacific theater was immediately embraced, upon its original publication in 1951, as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of World War II. In the intervening half century, The Caine Mutiny has become a perennial favorite of readers young and old, has sold millions of copies throughout the world, and has achieved the status of a modern classic.

The Caine Mutiny is the book that brought us the iconic character of Captain Queeg, immortalized on film by Humphrey Bogart and famous for such gems as:

Aboard my ship, excellent performance is standard, standard performance is sub-standard, and sub-standard performance is not permitted to exist.

Is Queeg incompetent? Cowardly? Or mentally unbalanced, perhaps dangerously so? That’s the moral dilemma that the junior officers on board the Caine must confront, deciding whether the safety of their ship demands overthrowing their leader — or whether the fact that Queeg is a poor captain is irrelevant to the fact that military men must obey the chain of command, period.

The Caine Mutiny is an exciting, intelligent read — at once an accurate portrayal of the alternating dangers and boredom of life at sea, an exploration of the inner workings of men under pressure, and a rollicking tale of a band of brothers that isn’t quite as noble and self-sacrificing as most war movies might have us believe. Filled with storms at sea, wartime engagements, and plenty of legal drama, The Caine Mutiny is a modern classic of wartime fiction.

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19Sep2013

Flashback Friday: The Crimson Portait

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight — and you’re invited to join in!

Here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

The Crimson Portrait by Jody Shields

(published 2006)

From Goodreads:

Spring 1915. On a sprawling country estate not far from London a young woman mourns her husband, fallen on the battlefields of what has been declared the first World War… But the isolated and eerie stillness in which she grieves is shattered when her home is transformed into a bustling military hospital to serve the war’s most irreparably injured. Disturbed by the intrusion of the suffering men and their caretakers, the young widow finds unexpected solace in the company of a wounded soldier whose face, concealed by bandages, she cannot see. Their affair takes an unexpected turn when fate presents her with an opportunity: to remake her lover with the unwitting help of a visionary surgeon and an American woman artist in the image of her lost husband. Inspired by the little-known but extraordinary collaboration between artists and surgeons in the treatment of wounded men in the First World War, The Crimson Portrait peels back layers of suspense and intrigue to illuminate the abiding mysteries of identity and desire.

The Crimson Portrait is an atmospheric novel, creating the feeling of life during the Great War. I read this several years ago in the days before Downton Abbey, but now I can’t help but picture this book in a Downton-like setting, with stretchers full of hideously wounded young men filling the elegant rooms of the manor. In The Crimson Portrait, the wounded at this particular estate all suffer from facial injuries, from mild to complete disfigurement. We witness the early stages of facial reconstructive techniques, as doctors and artists work together to alleviate suffering and give these poor young soldiers a chance at something resembling a normal life. Meanwhile, the young widow of the estate sets in motion a plan to alleviate her heartbreak; it’s twisted and unhealthy, sure, but it’s also terribly sad and I couldn’t help but feel compassion for this young woman and her struggle to make sense of her loss.

I always find that WWI-era novels like this one, taking place in the most genteel of settings, pack a huge emotional punch, as they convey the utter horror of war and the mindless tragedy of the losses suffered — all in stark contrast to the lovely greenery of the English countryside. In The Crimson Portrait, we see the waste and ruin of a generation of young men, and the terrible, unending ache left to their survivors. It’s a beautifully written story, fascinating and sorrowful, and I recommend it for anyone interested in reading about that particular time in history.

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12Sep2013

Flashback Friday: Vamped

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight — and you’re invited to join in!

Here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

Vamped by David Sosnowski

(published 2004)

From Goodreads:

Martin Kowalski is an eighty-year-old man stuck in a twenty-year-old body. He works the graveyard shift. He has a poster of Bela Lugosi on his wall and a box of uneaten Count Chocula in his pantry. He drinks stem-cell-derived blood from cleverly packaged and marketed juice boxes. He is, in short, a vampire. But since his wildly successful scheme to turn as many mortals as possible into vampires — “vamp” them rather than kill them — resulted in a new immortal majority, Marty finds little of interest to fill his countless days.

From the deeply imaginative mind of David Sosnowski — who gave us the critically acclaimed junkie-angel classic Rapture — bursts this neo-vampire novel studded with pint-size vampires known as “screamers” (children who were vamped and are none too happy about it); priest vampires who helped convert their flock into lifetime members of the Church; stripper vampires who lap-danced their way into customers’ veins; and one very small, very outspoken human girl.

When Marty decides to end his endless life of soul-crushing ennui — call it vampire affluenza — a three-foot blond obstacle is thrown in his path: Isuzu Trooper Cassidy, a refugee from a human hunting preserve. At first he thinks “midnight snack,” but before the sun comes up, Isuzu is the one snacking on his prized cereal collection as she charms him into staying undead long enough to raise her in a world rife with danger and almost entirely populated by vampires yearning for the taste of real human blood.

Most of my Flashback Friday books have been rather serious ones, all in all. Vamped is decidedly not.

Sorry, humans, but in the world of Vamped, the vampires have won. Pretty much no humans live “in the wild” in this world, although a few tasty specimens are kept for hunting and sporting purposes. Instead, vamps live off of synthesized blood in a world they control… and for Marty, at least, it’s all rather boring. Life eternal equals life of no change, and it’s hard to find a reason to keep going. But when Marty finds a tiny human creature on the loose, his world is turned upside-down. Although it may sound like Vamped verges on becoming a sweet, gooey, sentimental, little-girl-saves-grumpy-guy kind of story, it’s actually a whole lot darker and funnier than that. There’s danger lurking around every corner, and Marty has to be both brave and inventive if he has any chance whatsoever of keeping Isuzu alive.

While the vampire genre is so overdone these days, Vamped has some fresh elements that make it a very fun read and a real stand-out among the crowded vampire bookshelves. (I myself was particularly tickled by the concept of Alaska becoming a vampire vacation fantasyland — what could be better than a place where the sun disappears for months at a time?) I’m surprised that more people haven’t heard of this book. I’d place it in my vampire book collection right alongside Christopher Moore’s outrageously awesome Bloodsucking Fiends, You Suck, and Bite Me. I’ve mostly run out of patience with the topic of vampires in general — but I’ll always make an exception for a vampire book that can make me laugh.

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Do you host a blog hop or book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I’m building a Book Blog Meme Directory, and need your help! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!

5Sep2013

Flashback Friday: Girl in Hyacinth Blue

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight — and you’re invited to join in!

Here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland

(published 1999)

From Goodreads:

A professor invites a colleague from the art department to his home to view a painting he has kept secret for decades in Susan Vreeland’s powerful historical novel, Girl in Hyacinth Blue. The professor swears it’s a Vermeer — but why exactly has he kept it hidden so long? The reasons unfold in a gripping sequence of stories that trace ownership of the work back to Amsterdam during World War II and still further to the moment of the painting’s inception.

Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer was all the rage in 1999, roaring back into public awareness through not one, but two works of fiction centering on his rare but highly esteemed paintings. The more well-known of the two is, of course, The Girl With The Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, which went on to become a successful film (which in turn gave Scarlett Johansson one of her first leading roles). By comparison, Girl in Hyacinth Blue flew largely under the radar, which is a shame, in my opinion.

The structure of this novel is quite interesting, consisting of eight chapters that are stand-alone but connected stories. The book has a a reverse chronology that traces one Vermeer painting, from the opening chapter in the 1990s back through World War II and then still further back, finally reaching all the way to the painting’s creation in the 17th century. In each story, we see the role the painting played in the lives of the people who possessed it, and through each story, we get a snapshot of a different historical era and the flavor and essence of life at that time.

Truly a remarkable achievement, Girl in Hyacinth Blue can be enjoyed as a novel or as a series of stories which can be read individually. There’s a certain sadness to all of the stories, as well as some lovely moments of appreciating the impact of beauty on everyday lives.

Note from your friendly Bookshelf Fantasies host: To join the Flashback Friday fun, write a blog post about a book you love (please mention Bookshelf Fantasies as the Flashback Friday host!) and share your link below. Don’t have a blog post to share? Then share your favorite oldie-but-goodie in the comments section. Jump in!

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29Aug2013

Flashback Friday: Alaska by James Michener

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight — and you’re invited to join in!

Here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

Alaska by James Michener

(published 1988)

From Goodreads:

Master storyteller James Michener reveals Alaska in all its awesome, sweeping majesty. From the near-forgotten past, to the highly technological present, from self-defense to self-determination, here are the men and women who tried to tame the land, seize its bounty, and lay claim to the elusive spirit that holds native and visitor spellbound. A stirring portrait of a human community living on the edge of the world, ALASKA claims a bold heritage of survival against all odds.

I’ve come to really appreciate preparing for travel by reading fiction about my destination — and reading James Michener may just be the pinnacle of travel/historical fiction. In books such as Alaska, Michener goes back — way, way back — to the geological events that led to the land mass formations that became known as Alaska, and traces every major event since, including mastadons, migration of native peoples, invaders of all stripes, and the US purchase and eventual statehood. Not many authors can pull off a novel that covers literally millions of years of history and at the same time makes the reader care deeply about the diverse cast of characters met along the way, but Michener is a pro.

I first read Michener’s Alaska almost ten years ago while eagerly anticipating an Alaskan cruise, and I’ll tell you — it was perfect. I went on my trip feeling like I was visiting familiar territory, and got such a thrill from visits to the Yukon pass where gold seekers climbed and a stop in Sitka, site of early Russian colonization.

Way back when, this is what I wrote about Alaska on Goodreads:

James Michener’s Alaska is an exhaustive — and exhausting — primer on Alaskan history, filtered through the lens of fiction. As an alternative to reading a stuffy old history book, this Alaska has a lot to offer: colorful characters (some historical, some fictional), dramatic landscapes, momentous occasions, and far-reaching human drama. On the down side, if you’re looking for actual historical facts, they’re here — but you have to go looking for them. While Michener does provide notes detailing fictional vs non-fictional elements, it leaves the reader guessing from time to time whether he’s presenting an example of what might have happened, or something that actually occurred. In true Michener fashion, the books starts with the geological underpinnings of the area, billions of years ago, and moves forward in time to include mastadons and woolly mammoths before finally reaching the first human settlers. The book is entertaining, jam-packed with facts and figures, and illustrates historic times by focusing on the individuals who lived through them. I would recommend Alaska to anyone interested in gaining an overview of the state’s history… although I must be honest and state that the first word that occurred to me when I reached the last page (page 1073!) was “finally!”

Overall — and despite the fact that the book does include a chapter told from the point of view of a salmon (really!) — I remember enjoying Alaska quite a bit, despite the length. It felt like a task to read, but in the end I took away so much from it. Incidentally, I used this approach several years earlier and read Michener’s Hawaii before my first visit to the islands, and thought it was phenomenal.

Final bit of disclosure: Why am I highlighting Alaska today? Because that’s where I’m headed! I’m off for a week’s adventure with my lovely and wonderful daughter, heading off for a road trip from Fairbanks to Denali to Seward and assorted points in between. I’m so excited for our trip, and even more excited to spend a whole week on vacation with my daughter!

Happy Flashback Friday!

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22Aug2013

Flashback Friday: What Was She Thinking? Notes On A Scandal

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight — and you’re invited to join in!

Here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller

(published 2003)

From Goodreads:

Schoolteacher Barbara Covett has led a solitary life until Sheba Hart, the new art teacher at St. George’s, befriends her. But even as their relationship develops, so too does another: Sheba has begun an illicit affair with an underage male student. When the scandal turns into a media circus, Barbara decides to write an account in her friend’s defense—and ends up revealing not only Sheba’s secrets, but also her own.

If there’s a more perfect example of an unreliable narrator in fiction, I don’t know what it is! What Was She Thinking is a first-person account, narrated by Barbara, which chronicles her friendship with the young and exciting Sheba Hart. But Barbara’s viewpoint can’t necessarily be trusted. Is she telling us what truly happened, or is she relating the story as a means of justifying her own very questionable actions? The further we read, the more we realize that Barbara has an agenda, and is not just a witness but a catalyst for some of the catastrophic events in the novel.

Barbara’s mind is a dark and twisted place, and What Was She Thinking delves deeply into the scandals and betrayals in which Barbara and Sheba become embroiled. The book is compact and a fast read, with a sharpness and deviousness that are a delight to experience.

This book was made into a movie, 2006’s Notes On A Scandal, starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. In my opinion, while the movie was quite good, it lacked the insidiousness of the book. In the book, we believe Barbara to be decent and trustworthy at the start, and it’s only as we move forward that we realize that she’s anything but. In the movie, because we see the characters in action rather than just getting Barbara’s viewpoint of events, it much plainer from the beginning that Barbara has a screw (or two) loose and is not best friend material.

If you’ve seen the movie, give the book a try and see how they compare! Or if you’re unfamiliar with both, start with the book, then see what you think of the movie adaptation. Either way, the book is twisted fun and the movie is marvelous too.

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15Aug2013

Flashback Friday: Angle of Repose

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight — and you’re invited to join in!

Here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

(first published 1971)

From Goodreads:

Wallace Stegner’s Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery—personal, historical, and geographical. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents’ remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America’s western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he’s willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.

I didn’t grow up in California, although I’ve been living here in the Golden State for over 20 years now. Perhaps that’s why I always feel a gap in my knowledge of the history of the West. In my childhood “back East”, I seem to recall spending a lot of time in school learning about the American Revolution and the Civil War, but westward expansion was practically a footnote. As an adult, I’ve always been eager to learn more about my adopted state — and for me, the best way to learn is not just by reading history books but by reading fiction that gives a feel, a taste, a grand sense of what a time period was truly like.

I couldn’t have asked for better as a newcomer to California than Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. Framed as a story within a story, we see the main character in the 1960s researching his grandparents’ experiences a century earlier. Grandmother Susan was a refined young woman — a New Yorker — who became enamored of the glamor of westward exploration and discovery. Practically on a whim, she marries mining engineer Oliver and sets out on what she envisions as an adventure, not really grasping that she’s changing her entire life for good.

Angle of Repose presents a portrait of a bygone time through Susan’s letters as well as her narrative, always filtered through 20th century narrator Lyman’s perspective. We get the feel for the grittiness of the frontier, the hardships endured by those who forged ahead through the exploration of the West, the exhilaration of discovery as well as the culture shock of the more civilized Easterner forced to adapt to life in the harsh West.

The writing is challenging but very much worth the effort. The style takes some getting used to, but once you’re in the groove, it has a rough beauty that’s a real pleasure to experience. Here are two small snippets:

Susan Ward came West not to join a new society but to endure it, not to build anything but to enjoy a temporary experience and make it yield whatever instruction it contained. She anticipated her life in New Almaden as she had looked forward to the train journey across the continent — as a rather strenuous outdoor excursion…

Nothing on the trip to New Almaden next day modified her understanding that her lot at first would be hardship. It was intensely hot, the valley roads seen through the train windows boiled with white dust, Lizzie’s usually silent baby cried and would not be comforted. In San Jose a stage with black leather curtains waited; they were the only passengers. but her anticipation of a romantic Bret Harte stage ride lasted only minutes. Dust engulfed them…

My edition of Angle of Repose is 569 pages. Definitely not a light summer read! But if you’re willing to put in the time and have patience enough to ease your way through the first several chapters, you’ll find this book fascinating and rewarding — at least, I did, and I’m happy to recommend it. For a glimpse of the excitement and awful stress of the frontier, you can’t do much better than Angle of Repose.

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8Aug2013

Flashback Friday: Brideshead Revisited

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight — and you’re invited to join in!

Here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

(first published 1945)

From Goodreads:

The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh’s novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder’s infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.

And also:

Evelyn Waugh’s most celebrated work is a memory drama about the intense entanglement of the narrator, Charles Ryder, with a great Anglo-Catholic family. Written during World War II, the story mourns the passing of the aristocratic world Waugh knew in his youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities; in so doing it also provides a profound study of the conflict between the demands of religion and the desires of the flesh.

At once romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, Brideshead Revisited transcends Waugh’s familiar satiric exploration of his cast of lords and ladies, Catholics and eccentrics, artists and misfits, revealing him to be an elegiac, lyrical novelist of the utmost feeling and lucidity.

Brideshead Revisited is an elegantly written look into the life of a grand family (think Downtown Abbey’s Crawleys, but ardently Catholic). Charles is our every-man, the outsider who finds a way into the aristocratic home of the Marchmains by way of his friendship with their wayward son Sebastian.

With ruminations on the social class system of England between the world wars, the impact of religion and faith, and the conflict between romantic love and family obligation, Brideshead Revisited is at once a sweeping period piece and a morality tale. By viewing this world through Charles’s eyes, we get to see the life of the Marchmains as something strange and new — and yet it’s clear just how very much Charles wants to be a part of that world, through brotherhood, friendship, and romantic love.

Ultimately, it’s the religious convictions of the family that determine the fate of the romantic entanglements in Brideshead Revisited, and while some readers express frustrations over the decidedly non-romantic outcomes, the motives and thought processes of the characters are part of what makes this novel so fascinating. As a character study and as a portrait of a time gone by, Brideshead Revisited is a rich, rewarding read, and is still as relevant today as it was when written.

Keeping with my trend of providing movie tie-ins for recent Flashback Friday posts, I will point out that there have been several radio and TV productions of Brideshead Revisited, perhaps most memorably the 1981 TV mini-series starring Jeremy Irons. A word of explanation regarding the picture: Sebastian, the dissolute son of the Marchmains, was notorious at Oxford for his odd habits, among them the constant carrying of a teddy bear named Aloysius. Adorable, right?

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1Aug2013

Flashback Friday: Fail-Safe

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight — and you’re invited to join in!

Here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler

(first published 1962)

From Goodreads:

Something has gone wrong. A group of American bombers armed with nuclear weapons is streaking past the fail-safe point, beyond recall, and no one knows why. Their destination — Moscow.

In a bomb shelter beneath the White House, the calm young president turns to his Russian translator and says, “I think we are ready to talk to Premier Kruschchev.” Not far away, in the War Room at the Pentagon, the secretary of defense and his aides watch with growing anxiety as the luminous blips crawl across a huge screen map. High over the Bering Strait in a large Vindicator bomber, a colonel stares in disbelief at the attack code number on his fail-safe box and wonders if it could possibly be a mistake.

First published in 1962, when America was still reeling from the Cuban missle crisis, Fail-Safe reflects the apocalyptic attitude that pervaded society during the height of the Cold War, when disaster could have struck at any moment.

Fail-Safe is one of many Cold War era novels which vividly portray the fear of living in a nuclear age. Concepts like Mutually Assured Destruction were real and terrifying, and to Americans, the Soviets were the ultimate big bad. Fail-Safe perfectly captures the paranoia and helplessness of a populace facing potential annihilation at a moment’s notice.

The title refers to systems that ensure the success of a mission — but when the systems fail, there’s no way to intercede, and politicians world-wide are left to scramble for a solution to a situation that appears to have no ending but the utter destruction of mankind. As the world teeters on the brink of nuclear devastation, both sides work frantically to find a solution to what appears to be a hopeless situation.

I remember reading this book on the edge of my seat, finding it harder and harder to breathe as it went along. Fail-Safe builds in intensity and tension, page by page, until it’s practically unbearable. And oh, that ending!

I won’t give anything away, but if you want to read a book that truly conveys the terror of the Cold War and nuclear brinkmanship, Fail-Safe is an awfully good place to start.

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