<![CDATA[Exit A: A Novel]]>

false <![CDATA[Exit A: A Novel]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171239077m/91946.jpg 91946 12 Anthony Swofford follows his international bestseller, Jarhead, with an unforgettable first novel -- a powerful story about a youth spent on a U.S. air base in Japan and the gritty neon streets just outside it, where the Japanese underworld lurks and a rebellious young girl finds herself in great danger.Anthony Swofford took the literary world by storm with Jarhead, his electrifying memoir of serving as a U.S. marine in the Gulf War. Celebrated for its visceral candor and profane lyricism, Jarhead stands today as a landmark contribution to the literature of war. Now, in his bold fiction debut, Swofford demonstrates the same audacious vision as he plumbs the legacies of war, the wish for redemption, and the danger of love. Seventeen-year-old Severin Boxx lives on Yokota, an enormous American air force base on the outskirts of Tokyo that is home to fourteen thousand U.S. soldiers and a large contingent of long-range nuclear bombers. Just outside the base lies the busy Haijima rail station. Exit A is one of the many doorways into this place of movement, anonymity, and sudden disappearance. Much of the novel's action transpires in the netherworld around Exit A, a mad neon landscape of noodle shops, strip clubs, sushi joints, pawnshops, whorehouses, sake fountains, military surplus stores, tattoo parlors, hash bars, comic book stores, pachinko parlors, fish shops, and alleys -- "the alleys that all lead somewhere, usually down." It's here, not long before the Gulf War begins, that we first meet Severin, an earnest, muscular high-school-football star and son of a base colonel. Like most of the other young American men on the air base, Severin is mad for Virginia Kindwall, the base general's daughter, who is a hafu -- half American and half Japanese. Beautiful, smart, and utterly defiant of a father who wields godlike military power, Virginia has become a petty criminal in the Japanese underground. Severin is soon caught up in Virginia's world. But theirs is not a typical high school romance; they fall into trouble way over their heads and are quickly subjected to the enormous, unforgiving tensions between America and Japan -- a relationship still informed by the long shadows of World War II and America's use of the atomic bomb.Years later, Severin and Virginia remain lost to each other -- until an emotionally frayed, thirtysomething Severin embarks on a quest to find Virginia and, in so doing, the part of himself taken from him when his boyhood abruptly ended. Like Jarhead before it, Anthony Swofford's Exit A is darkly irreverent, frankly erotic, and more than a little wicked, a tale told in a brooding, pained voice filled with the simple human fury of being alive. It is, in sum, a first novel in full. Building inexorably toward a climax that is at once suspenseful and emotionally overwhelming, Anthony Swofford's fiction debut is a triumph. 3050367 2007 Exit A: A Novel total:80|5:6|4:13|3:31|2:19|1:11| 80 224 117 22 3 0 false false Fri Jan 02 14:28:18 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 02 14:36:35 -0800 2009 more...]]> 1 0 false false Fri Nov 21 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Nov 07 12:54:33 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 23 14:27:15 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Aug 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 03 03:51:02 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 03 03:51:02 -0700 2009 more...]]> 1 0 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Jan 11 13:13:30 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 11 13:13:30 -0800 2008 I have a masochistic streak so I made it all the way to the end. The ending was good news/bad news kind of thing. The good news was that the book was over and I was free of it. The b...more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 19 23:03:37 -0700 2007 Sun Jun 24 23:02:29 -0700 2007 more...]]> 2 0 false false Mon Aug 31 20:13:32 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 31 20:15:49 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Tue Dec 01 07:35:16 -0800 2009 Tue Dec 01 07:35:58 -0800 2009 1 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 18 12:54:21 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 20 08:44:56 -0800 2008 more...]]> 1 0 false true Mon Aug 17 08:49:10 -0700 2009 Sun Feb 17 09:32:32 -0800 2008 Mon Aug 17 08:49:10 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Oct 13 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Oct 05 12:16:45 -0700 2008 Mon Oct 13 09:52:31 -0700 2008 1 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Oct 14 12:52:31 -0700 2007 Sun Oct 14 12:52:31 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Jul 02 05:47:55 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 02 05:53:29 -0700 2007
-- from Metro Pulse [http://www.metropulse.com...]]> 2 0 false false Tue May 22 03:42:37 -0700 2007 Tue May 22 03:43:59 -0700 2007 1 0 false false Thu Jan 31 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 27 17:20:06 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 04 07:47:37 -0800 2008 0 0 false false Fri Jul 20 23:14:34 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 20 23:16:30 -0700 2007
the review is sketchy, but i'll probably end up reading this one.]]> 3 0 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Jul 15 21:09:49 -0700 2007 Sun Jul 15 21:16:41 -0700 2007 3 0 false false Sun Mar 30 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Mar 30 19:40:29 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 01 16:40:13 -0700 2008 ]]> 2 0 false false Wed Jun 25 20:52:50 -0700 2008 Wed Aug 20 09:06:04 -0700 2008 3 0 false false Mon Jul 23 12:45:29 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 23 12:48:21 -0700 2007 2 0 false false Wed Oct 01 18:43:13 -0700 2008 Wed Oct 01 18:43:54 -0700 2008 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=91946