No One Thinks of Greenland
- Book Review,
by John Griesemer
From Publishers Weekly
It's 1959 at the start of this intelligent first novel, and the Korean War has been over for six years, but the horribly mutilated casualties hidden away in an obscure military hospital on the U.S. Army base at Qangattarsa, Greenland, are still living with its consequences. The Wing, as the hospital is called, is run by Col. Lane Woolwrap, a half-mad bureaucratic genius who equips the place with oak paneling and Tiffany lamps. Assigned to his command is army misfit Rudy Spruance, an information officer relegated to Qangattarsa for reasons unknown. Woolwrap orders Rudy to start a newspaper to boost morale, but Rudy's journalistic investigations uncover unpleasant facts about the history and the future of the hospital's patients. Qangattarsa is a mysterious and disorienting place, and the harsh Greenland landscape undermines the soldiers' sanity; glaciers move menacingly in the night, hordes of mosquitoes attack and the long polar darkness of winter is hard to bear. Griesemer is at his best describing the strange recreational activities that occupy the Greenland troops: chasing polar bears in jeeps, throwing beer blasts that degenerate into fistfights and public nudity. In its manic moments, the book recalls the topsy-turvy military worlds of Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, though it doesn't quite reach the subversive heights of its predecessors. Rudy's love affair with Sgt. Irene Teal, the colonel's aide and companion, is conventional, and where Heller's Yossarian was an inspired antihero, forging his own moral code in order to cope with his surreal surroundings, Rudy takes a more standard route, fighting for the weak against a malevolent system. Still, his struggle is a compelling one, as post-Korea and Vietnam revelations make the conspiracies imagined here near-plausible. Regional author tour. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
In a classic army snafu, Corporal Rudy Spruance is off-loaded from an airplane at a military installation in an unknown, very remote place. Awakening in a hospital bed after being bitten by a monstrous cloud of mosquitoes near the runway, he learns that he is in Greenland, at a secret hospital housing the most maimed and disfigured wounded of the Korean War. It's 1959, and only about "66 and two thirds" such victims remain. As Rudy finds his way, he learns that the limbless and faceless victims were reported missing in action. As they die in Greenland, next of kin are notified that their remains have been recovered in Korea. Rooted in truth, this is a terrific--possibly great--first novel. The sense of place is vivid, especially the Stark Raving Dark, the long winter that causes everyone to lose all sense of time, brawl senselessly, and burst into crying jags. The hospital wing that houses the victims is surreal but, oddly, as comforting as it is horrific. Primary characters, particularly the charismatic and enigmatic CO and the diffident Spruance, are fully formed. And the military mentality and attendant bureaucracy that influence everything but the environment offer a narrative glue for a quirky, affecting, and powerful read. Thomas Gaughan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“What’s not to love about this intricately imagined and altogether delightful first novel?...No One Thinks of Greenland is that rarest of first-novel achievements:an across-the-board success.” —Esquire
“A powerful look at the madness of war and its aftermath...Griesemer has created a poignant novel, with a soupçon of sassy and irreverent humor.” —The Denver Post
“We are in the military screw-up novel....No One Thinksof Greenland contributes wit and wildness of its own, sharpened by the author’s gait, all verve and jolt....He hurtles us right in....Griesemer has written a novel with a distinctive cutting vision [and] alluring puzzlement.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Dramatic...mystery spiced with romance.” —Chicago Tribune
“Griesemer proceeds to savagely send up the military... No One Thinks of Greenland effectively skewers the excesses of the early Cold War mentality.” —The Washington Post Book World
“A fever-dream of a novel, destined to become a Cold War classic.” —John Sayles
“An intelligent first novel....The book recalls the topsy-turvy military worlds of Catch-22 and M*A*S*H.... Compelling.” —Publishers Weekly
“This is a terrific—possibly great—first novel....A quirky, affecting, and powerful read.” —Booklist (starred review)
“A terrific and compelling first novel, haunting andbeautifully imagined, that hovers between the real and the apocalyptic. Griesemer pulls off the enviable trickof creating a place that gradually becomes a place werecognize from our dreams.” —George Saunders
“Absolutely the best tragicomic literary war candy since Terry Southern’s Dr. Strangelove. Literary hijinks laced with the cyanide of truth.” —Tom Paine
Book Description
“You’ll want to scratch.” These spoken words open to us the strange and beguiling world of young Rudy Spruance, forced to join the military due to a mysterious past, and sent for some inexplicable reason to a top-secret military hospital in Greenland. There he meets a wide cast of unusual and colorful characters, outcasts and rejects all; begins to fall for the commanding officer’s leggy and strong-willed girlfriend; and slowly uncovers the awful secret behind the portion of the base dubbed “the Wing.”
About the Author
John Griesemer’s fiction has been published in Gettysburg Review, Glimmer Train, Boulevard, Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. No One Thinks of Greenland is his first novel. He is currently at work on his second book, an epic historical novel about the laying of the transatlantic cable. He lives with his family in Lyme, New Hampshire.
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