Soon after Jeannie and Kip’s mother’s death, JFK is assassinated. The 19-year-old Jeannie feels her grief has been encroached on: “She was watching her loss exploded onto a network screen; and it bothered her that other eyes were gobbling it up.” Throughout The Outside Lands, personal trauma and loss are offset by national tragedy. While she tries to come to terms with her sexual identity – and while Jeannie and Kip’s father succumbs to depression and alcoholism – men and boys, including the teenage Kip, are drafted for service in Vietnam. His chapters of fear-fuelled excursions and childish banter between soldiers alternate with Jeannie’s quieter and more introspective ones. She is conflicted, struggling with her sexuality and with justifying, in her mind, the legitimacy of the war. Her indecisiveness permeates Kohler’s prose; adjectives combine in oxymoronic fusions: “slow-fast”, “beautiful-ugly”. The war by the end seems as personal a tragedy to Jeannie and Kip as was their mother’s death; consequently, Kohler’s debut – confident and flawlessly researched – comes to represent the detrimental effect of the war on an entire generation.
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