- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Pocket Books (2 Jun 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1416527559
- ISBN-13: 978-1416527558
- Product Dimensions: 12.8 x 19.6 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 854,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Exit A
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
1989. Severin Boxx is the seventeen-year-old son of an Air Force pilot who lives on a military base in Japan. He loves -- from afar -- Virginia Kindwall, the daughter of the general who runs the base. Virginia is tough and sophisticated beyond her years, and when she falls in with the Japanese underground her dealings result in her disappearance and Severin is forced to return to America. 2006. Unhappily married and living in San Francisco, Severin's life is turned upside-down by the arrival of a postcard from General Kindwall, now dying in a hospital in Vietnam, asking him to find his daughter before he dies. But the search for Virginia will take him back to the country of his youth, and to unexpected consequences for both. Suffused with the same intensity of emotion and facility with language as Jarhead, Anthony Swofford's debut novel marks the arrival of a major new voice in fiction.
About the Author
Anthony Swofford grew up on military bases in the US and Japan, and joined the Marine Corps in 1988, aged eighteen. He was deployed to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield in 1990 with the Second Battalion, 7th Marines. On leaving the Marines Swofford attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Exit A the title, and the linear drawing of what looks like a veiled woman on the cover, would never entice me to pick up this book. Even the synopsis gives the impression of being what I would call a 'man's book' about the military. However it is quite the opposite. A well written book about relationships, misunderstandings and feelings. Great insight into the different cultures of life in Japan, Vietnam and the US.
Format:Paperback
Yes, take your place amongst America's very finest writers for this is as good as it gets. There is something exhilarating about being so in thrall to a writer's skill at plot and characterisation; it really is breathtaking.
The story of Severin Boxx and Virginia Kindwall, as well as being one of the utmost complexity, is so dripping in the atmosphere of time and place that it has a virtually cinematic reach. With it's piercingly authentic Far Eastern backdrop it's almost impossible not to conjure up 'Lost in Translation', or even vague recollections of the military personality from both 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Mash'. And General Kindwall, Virginia's father, gradually becomes more real than people you actually know. Now, also, I understand how it really might be possible to go from hatred to compassion to redemption in only one lifetime.
And then just look at Swofford's complete mastery of storyline, swooping and swerving through time, utterly assured whether covering two weeks over fifty pages or fifteen years over a hundred. This is a ride you really want to go on and neither do you want it to end because you're never sure how it's going to get you to your destination. But you always feel safe in this writer's hands, a bit like how it must be to be driven across a big city at breakneck speed, but by a Formula One driver.
I can think of only four other novels of recent times that can sit with 'Exit A' at this exalted top table: Anthony Doerr's 'About Grace'; George Hagen's 'The Laments'; Chang-Rae Lee's 'Aloft' and A.M. Homes's 'This Book Will Save Your Life'. But the truth is, if I never again read a book as good as this one I don't think I'll really mind.
The story of Severin Boxx and Virginia Kindwall, as well as being one of the utmost complexity, is so dripping in the atmosphere of time and place that it has a virtually cinematic reach. With it's piercingly authentic Far Eastern backdrop it's almost impossible not to conjure up 'Lost in Translation', or even vague recollections of the military personality from both 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Mash'. And General Kindwall, Virginia's father, gradually becomes more real than people you actually know. Now, also, I understand how it really might be possible to go from hatred to compassion to redemption in only one lifetime.
And then just look at Swofford's complete mastery of storyline, swooping and swerving through time, utterly assured whether covering two weeks over fifty pages or fifteen years over a hundred. This is a ride you really want to go on and neither do you want it to end because you're never sure how it's going to get you to your destination. But you always feel safe in this writer's hands, a bit like how it must be to be driven across a big city at breakneck speed, but by a Formula One driver.
I can think of only four other novels of recent times that can sit with 'Exit A' at this exalted top table: Anthony Doerr's 'About Grace'; George Hagen's 'The Laments'; Chang-Rae Lee's 'Aloft' and A.M. Homes's 'This Book Will Save Your Life'. But the truth is, if I never again read a book as good as this one I don't think I'll really mind.
Format:Paperback
Having mostly enjoyed Swofford's first book, the hugely successful Gulf War memoir Jarhead, I was curious to see what his fiction would be like. This somewhat uneven debut is written in much the same style prose, and does an equally good job taking the reader into a world they probably don't know firsthand. In Jarhead, Swofford himself was our guide to the first Gulf War, while here teenage Severin Boxx is our all-American guide to life on an American military base in Tokyo.
The first section is set on and around Yokata Air Base circa 1989, and is very effective at capturing the uneasy mix of American and Japanese culture. The base commandant's half-Japanese daughter Virginia is the living embodiment of this cross-cultural tension. Somewhat predictably, she's a loose cannon -- a crackling vortex of cliched teenage rebellion with a bizarre fascination with Faye Dunnaway's Bonnie from the 1972 film Bonnie and Clyde. As it happens, her father is also the high school football coach, and linebacker Severin's loyalties are torn between his coach and Virginia, whom he has a crush on. Swofford resolves this tension in a fairly over-the-top scene at a football game, which segues into a wholly ridiculous subplot involving a Japanese hood and kidnappings engineered by North Korean intelligence.
The curtain drops, and then raises some fifteen years later. Severin is now in his early 30s, living a very comfortable life in San Francisco with his moneyed professor of psychology wife. Although the plain-thinking teenager has grown up to earn a doctorate in French somethingorother, he's turned his back on academia and works as a groundskeeper at his wife's school. Although this section occasionally skips back over to Japan, where we learn what happened to Virginia, the bulk concerns Severin's clearly doomed marriage. As in the first part, this plays out in a rather unbelievable manner, and there's a distinctly artificial feeling, culminating in a bizarre "gotcha" scene.
The final third of the book is set in motion by a mysterious message Severin receives from his old coach. It seems he wants to hire Severin to track Virginia down and bring her to Vietnam (where he has retired) before he dies. This sends Severin to Vietnam and then Japan to confront all of themes the book has built up: facing one's past mistakes, reconciliation, first love, forgiveness, and so forth. Again, there is an element of implausibility to it all, and a rather convenient film festival plays a significant role.
Despite the various implausibilities and problems, the book is not without its charm. Swofford's prose is a pleasure to read, and in Severin, he skillfully captures a certain type of American male. The ending is surprisingly conventional and perhaps reveals Swofford's inner sentimental self. However, the central characters are all flawed and unlikable enough that the reader may not feel they deserve such a soft touch.
The first section is set on and around Yokata Air Base circa 1989, and is very effective at capturing the uneasy mix of American and Japanese culture. The base commandant's half-Japanese daughter Virginia is the living embodiment of this cross-cultural tension. Somewhat predictably, she's a loose cannon -- a crackling vortex of cliched teenage rebellion with a bizarre fascination with Faye Dunnaway's Bonnie from the 1972 film Bonnie and Clyde. As it happens, her father is also the high school football coach, and linebacker Severin's loyalties are torn between his coach and Virginia, whom he has a crush on. Swofford resolves this tension in a fairly over-the-top scene at a football game, which segues into a wholly ridiculous subplot involving a Japanese hood and kidnappings engineered by North Korean intelligence.
The curtain drops, and then raises some fifteen years later. Severin is now in his early 30s, living a very comfortable life in San Francisco with his moneyed professor of psychology wife. Although the plain-thinking teenager has grown up to earn a doctorate in French somethingorother, he's turned his back on academia and works as a groundskeeper at his wife's school. Although this section occasionally skips back over to Japan, where we learn what happened to Virginia, the bulk concerns Severin's clearly doomed marriage. As in the first part, this plays out in a rather unbelievable manner, and there's a distinctly artificial feeling, culminating in a bizarre "gotcha" scene.
The final third of the book is set in motion by a mysterious message Severin receives from his old coach. It seems he wants to hire Severin to track Virginia down and bring her to Vietnam (where he has retired) before he dies. This sends Severin to Vietnam and then Japan to confront all of themes the book has built up: facing one's past mistakes, reconciliation, first love, forgiveness, and so forth. Again, there is an element of implausibility to it all, and a rather convenient film festival plays a significant role.
Despite the various implausibilities and problems, the book is not without its charm. Swofford's prose is a pleasure to read, and in Severin, he skillfully captures a certain type of American male. The ending is surprisingly conventional and perhaps reveals Swofford's inner sentimental self. However, the central characters are all flawed and unlikable enough that the reader may not feel they deserve such a soft touch.
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