Rating: 
Summary: If you only buy one book of short stories, buy THIS:
Review: There have been many combat and recovery stories about Vietnam, but no one before has written from a woman's perspective such profoundly disturbing and darkly humorous insights, with a tough and unsentimental grasp of the horrors, ironies and psychological pressures of a war that still haunts America. O'Neill is the kind of writer that I look for constantly and seldom find. I was sorry when the book ended.
Rating:
Summary: Subtle, Ironic, Literary and Profoundly Moving
Review: This collection of fiction shows that Susan O'Neill is a talented writer first and foremost - and not just a woman veteran of Vietnam. O'Neill's stories capture the very essence, the distorted waking dream quality of the Vietnam War. The stories are like the discrete vignettes of a Hieronymous Bosch painting: in one corner a sadistic doctor is torturing a wounded North Vietnamese by giving him insufficient anaesthetic during surgery, in another corner a major's pet monkey is trashing an operating room, further on a Vietnamese ghost squats on an abandoned grave mound next to the mess hall, meanwhile Bob Hope strides the Xmas show stage swinging a golf club. O'Neill encapsulates the haunting horrible aesthetic of Vietnam with more deftness and subtlety than any writer so far. For this reason, the stories gain from repeat readings. O'Neill always treats this war, tragic because of its pointlessness, with seriousness and dignity. My favourite story from the collection was 'Prometheus Burned'. O'Neill's Prometheus is a former pre-med student who is educated enough to understand, not only the Prometheus pun, but also the fact that he is dying from third degree burns. Susan O'Neill's stories are for thoughtful grown-ups, not gung-ho flag wavers. At best, they will turn the latter into the former.
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