Exit A
Written by Anthony Swofford
Narrated by John Slattery
3/5
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About this audiobook
Seventeen-year-old Severin Boxx, an earnest, muscular high-school-football star, lives on an American air force base on the outskirts of Tokyo. 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 her father, Virginia has become a petty criminal in the Japanese underground.
Severin is soon caught up in Virginia's world, and together they drift through the mad neon landscape outside the walls of the base, near the busy Haijima rail station, a place of movement, anonymity, and sudden disappearance. Exit A is one of its many shadowy doorways. Severin and Virginia fall into trouble way over their heads and are soon subjected to the enormous, unforgiving tensions between America and Japan. Years later, Severin and Virginia remain lost to each other, until an emotionally frayed, thirty- something Severin embarks on a quest to find Virginia -- and the part of himself taken from him when his boyhood abruptly ended.
Darkly irreverent, frankly erotic, at once suspenseful and emotionally overwhelming, Swofford's Exit A builds inexorably toward a climax as it audaciously plumbs the legacies of war, the wish for redemption, and the danger of love..........
Anthony Swofford
Anthony Swofford served in a U.S. Marine Corps Surveillance and Target Acquisition/Scout-Sniper platoon during the Gulf War. After the war, he was educated at American River College; the University of California, Davis; and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has taught at the University of Iowa and Lewis and Clark College. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, Harper's, Men's Journal, The Iowa Review, and other publications. A Michener-Copernicus Fellowship recipient, he lives in New York.
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Reviews for Exit A
29 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Two teens who live on an American air base in Japan. One, seventeen-year old Severin, is the son of a colonel and is a football star. Virginia is the daughter of the base's general and is the object of Severin's silent love. They are seperated after a grand adventure and are brought back together again after some years as Virginia's father asks (commands) Severin to find his daughter before he dies.The parts about the life of base brats was interesting as I'm sure these kids frequently have interesting adventures as they try to rebel and prove themselves to their military fathers. However, I felt that Severin was more interested in bedding every half-attractive female that came his way and had a very high opinion of his abilities that was a bit obnoxious.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I listened to the audio version of this book. While the narration was excellent, the story was a bit convoluted and unnatural. It is basically a story about a bunch of people doing really stupid things for really stupid reasons and then dealing with the consequences of their actions. I found it lacking in character development, although there was plenty of opportunity to imagine the lives of the various characters. There was an abundance of WTF? moments and the resolution was so implausible, it actually worked. I didn't dislike the book but I don't think I would recommend it.