Rating: 
Summary: Sad and touching
Review: Both grandfather and grandson are more the same than they realize. Each generation feels isolated, yet is each going through the same sort of loss and fear over losing loved ones. I loved the interspersed flashbacks that Mead has; they show how much of a young, scared man he still is, even inside an older man's body. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Generations Collide and Memories Haunt in Riveting Novel
Review: Having been thoroughly mesmerized by Hull's first novel, LOSING JULIA, I was anxious to see if he could do it again or would he become, as many writers do, a one-hit wonder. Happily, he has equalled, if not exceeded, his earlier effort.
The realities of old age manifest themselves in the form of Mead, a WWII veteran dealing with wartime memories that won't let go and the death of Sophie, his wife of fifty-one years. His life has become a boring wait, waiting to join Sophie.
But one day his daughter calls from Chicago bemoaning the fact her son Andrew has been expelled from high school. She is a single mother who has reached the end of her resources and desperately needs help. Mead offers to take his grandson into his Santa Monica home and give his daughter a break.
Never was the generation gap more apparent than with Andrew and Mead in their first weeks together. Andrew arrives with bleached hair, jeans bagging below a decent level, and an earring. He is a pitiful sight with a terrible case of acne and a huge chip on his shoulder. Mead cannot believe his grandson has pulled a knife on another kid at school or that his nice normal life has produced a kid who looks like Andrew.
Andrew is not exactly thrilled to be with his grandfather either. He has been relentlessly bullied in school and only after his only friend commits suicide does he retaliate by pulling a knife on the chief bullier.
This unlikely duo seems destined for misery and is only slightly helped by an elderly woman who lives across the street from Mead and can see the goodness in both men. A near-tragedy shocks Mead out of his complacent life and forces him to act in order to save his grandson. Hoping to show him what a wonderful life he has and how much he has to be thankful for, he takes him on a trip to the famous battlegrounds of Europe including Normandy where Mead parachuted in on the D-Day invasion.
Jonathan Hull has done a remarkable job of getting inside the head of both characters, of showing the obstinancy and fear both have, and the slow and wary way they come to see the other person's heartache. For both have demons to exorcise and each will have to learn to lean on the other for the strength necessary.
A beautifully told tale of the hardship of aging with dignity, the trauma of being an outsider, the tragedy of losing those closest to you, and the memories that must be let go of in order to face the future unafraid.
From his graphic descriptions of wartime to his humorous look at how it feels to go to the beach with your grandfather, Jonathan Hull gives the reader something to think about, to reflect upon, and to cherish.
Rating: 
Summary: amazing use of past and present
Review: Hull's second book doens't come near the high quality read that his first (Losing Julia) did, but his ability to take the reader from the present to the past and back again is remarkable. Can't wait for his next novel.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book!!!!!
Review: I agree with everything everyone else has already written. I felt like I was in Normandy. I felt like I saw these people die. I felt like I saw Matt die. It was all very real and vivid. I could have dealt with a few hundred less cuss words though. I almost didn't want to read the book because of all the "f" words. The language was offensive but the story was beautiful.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful and Moving Book
Review: I always thought that there could always be a great link between a child and a grandparent - different from that of a parent -child. This book demonstrates how such a bond can occur. Mr. Hull creates vivid characters who each have their own inner demons with which they need to come to terms. The coming together of these characters was moving, vivid, alive and funny. I was thoroughly engrossed in the tale and the lives of these characters. It's nice to find an author who can bring out the best in their characters and make us laugh and cry within pages of one another.
Rating:
Summary: A story of redemption
Review: I found Hull's new book to be an even more engaging tale than his first effort, "Losing Julia," And I intend that as a huge compliment, since "Losing Julia" was one of my all-time favorite novels. In "The Distance From Normandy" Hull covers some of the same emotional territory as in the previous book, but does so this time with a greater sense of urgency, if that's possible. Like in his first book, the protagonist is a veteran, this time of WWII, whose life was defined and forever marked by that brutal experience. When we meet him, Mead is alone and lonely, recently widowed, watching the days pass in his Southern California home, living alternately in denial and disgust. But that all changes, seemingly for the worse, when his troubled, teenaged grandson, Andrew, comes to live with him for three weeks. Andrew has been expelled from school for violent behavior. Mead suggests to his daughter, Sharon, a single parent, that he take the boy and straighten him out. When these two troubled souls meet - on their own battlefield - the story begins. Hull never plays into the obvious here, never quite gives you what you expect you're about to get. He explores this complex relationship, this wide generational divide, without trivializing the emotion, without overstating the obvious. You are taken into the hearts and minds of these two men in painful and often tender ways. The dialogue is exceptionally believable, and as was the case in "Losing Julia," the War scenes are rendered without gloss or pretense. Hull has done his research, and I get the feeling as I did with his first book, that he does not see War as just a patriotic right of passage. Real people. Real pain. Ultimately this is a story of two men seeking their own unique redemption. How they find it together is the special gift of this book. A great read. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting story
Review: I have read Losing Julia and just loved it ~~ it was my favorite book for awhile. I read this book expecting to get the same kind of reaction as I did with Losing Julia ~~ and this book, while very well-written, didn't move me as much. I loved reading about Mead's experiences in the World War II. I can relate to Andrew not fitting in with his peers. I admire the relationship between grandfather and grandson even though they had to work to get it. I find it a very good story ~~ just not as heart-felt as Losing Julia was.
Mead takes in his grandson after his grandson was found threatening a class bully with a pocketknife. Disgusted with today's generation, Mead didn't know what to do with Andrew as he didn't understand the lack of direction his grandson exhibited with his own life. When Andrew tried to committ suicide, Mead decided that enough was enough and took him to retrace his old footsteps in WWII. Mead was one of the wave of young men that stormed the beach at Normandy to over-take it for the Allies. Mead had witnessed unspeakable horrors and sorrow as a young man and he had sworn he would never go back. Well, he reneged on his promise to himself for the sake of teaching his grandson the value of life.
This is a beautifully-written book. It has the substance of sharing a valued historical piece ~~ that will soon be lost to the tombs of time as more and more WWII veterans passes. It is a wonderful story of a man and grandson coming together in life to find themselves having something in common ~~ their love for one another.
11-24-04
Rating:
Summary: A touching story of healing and strength.
Review: I was lucky enough to get ahold of a pre-release copy, and, I must say, this book has touched my deeply. Two broken and bruised individuals find healing in one another. It's a story that we all should pay attention to. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Heal thyself first
Review: In THE DISTANCE FROM NORMANDY, two lives of quiet desperation, further divided by a two-generation gap, intersect.
Mead, in his late 70s, lives in San Diego. His beloved wife of 51 years died of cancer three years previous. Now, he joylessly trudges from day to day living with her ghost - and the ghosts of his comrades killed in combat against the Nazis when they parachuted into Normandy on D-Day with the 101st Airborne. Oh, and Andrew, the difficult teenage son of his single-parent, dysfunctional daughter, is just pulling up at the curb for a visit.
At 16, Andrew is a physically unprepossessing nerd. By his own estimation, he ranks 2,888 out of 3,000 on his high school's social ladder. He's ignored by girls, and bullied by boys. He was recently suspended for pulling a knife on one of his tormentors. Andrew's ghost is that of his best friend Matt, another social outcast, who recently committed suicide. Andrew is tempted to follow.
Mead's first impression of Andrew:
"What a punk, thought Mead, studying his grandson, whose enormous jeans could easily have fit on the biggest man in Mead's old rifle company. He wore dirty, unlaced sneakers ... and a large and rumpled black T-shirt with some sort of Satanic omen painted on it. He had a small, gold hoop earring in his left earlobe and his hair ... looked like it had been cut with shears, then fermented under a helmet for several weeks. In short, the boy looked like a refugee or drug freak."
At one point, Andrew shouts at his grandfather:
"You expect everybody to be like you, don't you? Well, I don't want to be like you! Why would anybody want to be like you? You don't have any friends, you don't do anything all day ... All you've got are your stupid medals and your stupid secret memories about stuff that happened decades ago ... Well, I don't want to turn out like you. I'd rather die."
This visit should go well, don't you think?
The prose of THE DISTANCE FROM NORMANDY doesn't have the powerful eloquence and elegance of Hull's previous work, LOSING JULIA, which perhaps has the capacity to reduce a sensitive person to tears (see my review dated 4-14-01). However, the strength of author Jonathan Hull's writing is that it poignantly conveys the human condition in general and that of his characters in particular. When, in flashback, Mead remembers for the reader his wartime experiences, one is perhaps reminded of the TV miniseries BAND OF BROTHERS, also about a company of 101st Airborne troopers fighting their way into Hitler's Reich.
The crisis in the plot occurs when Mead discovers Andrew with his finger on the trigger of a Luger pistol, one of the former's wartime souvenirs. In a last, desperate effort to put some iron in the boy, Mead takes him for a tour of the Normandy battlefields. And it's there that Mead himself must confront his most implacable and most secret ghost. Only then can he be healed and become a role model for Andrew.
As these two crippled lives collided, I thought the bridging of their differences a bit too pat and too tidy for me to award more than four stars. A TV adaptation would be the perfect Sunday night tearjerker, but not represent real life, in which too many loose ends form a ragged edge. But THE DISTANCE FROM NORMANDY is an engaging read, and I look forward to Hull's next offering.
Rating:
Summary: An appropriate title
Review: Jonathan Hull's new novel explores the distance between generations - the generation of a grandfather forced to grow up much too soon through his participation in WWII - and the generation of his confused grandson, a decent young man also touched by tragedy. Each character would prefer to remain a loner, to cope with their respective individual losses by shutting out family and friends. Circumstance draws them together for a few weeks, however - a time when each man slowly learns to respect the other and where both come to realize that character is not totally defined by a person's generation or experience. Hull's significant writing talent is on full display throughout the various moods of the story. He captures the personalities of the grandfather and the grandson perfectly - deftly using humor, pathos, and colorful dialog to establish depth of character and noteworthy nuance. Hull's description of WWII combat is superb. The story of the grandfather's WWII experiences lend much to the reader's understanding of both characters - the older man because he experienced such horrors and can never forget - the younger man because he has never experienced such horrors, yet can see at least some of the residue and scars left behind in his grandfather. I most enjoyed the author's description and obvious appreciation of the teenager of today - confused at times, like their grandparents were when they were young - but just as capable and loving as their grandparents' generation. Both the grandfather and the grandson are fully developed characters in Hull's narrative, but Hull hits the mark in the difficult task of honing a complete personality from a young character with limited life experience. A fine novel.
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