The Summer of Robert Bryon

The Summer of Robert Bryon by Steven Arnett    261 pages

“It’s fall 1966, and Robert Byron has returned to his home town of Blue Spring in Michigan after serving in Vietnam. Everyone there tries to welcome him home, but he’s unsocial and ends up alienating almost everyone. He pretty much keeps to himself through the winter, until the money he’d saved up in Vietnam runs outs, and he has to go back to work. He meets Jean Summers, a teacher at Blue Spring High School who’d just started her teaching career the previous fall herself, when Robert is hired by her landlord to do some work on the house she’s renting. They’re complete opposites in personality, but somehow, they’re attracted to each other anyway. The Summer of Robert Byron is their story: Of how Jean tries to redeem through love Robert’s alienation and the dark secret that he has brought home with him from the war. Can she succeed or is it too late to ever really bring him home again?”

Reading this novel is akin to staring at a wreck on the highway. It’s poorly written, but there was something about it that wouldn’t let me put it down (I’m almost ashamed that I read every word.). Robert Bryon was basically an ass before he was shipped off to Vietnam, but he was a bigger one when he came home. Maybe what appealed to me is that I was interested in learning if he could change. 

The moral of this story, in my opinion, is that the heart wants what the heart wants. And Robert and Jean wanted each other.

With a good editor, this could have been a very good book, but the poor syntax, misspelled words, and missing words got in the way. And I couldn’t help but noticed that Jean’s last name was Summers, and I wondered if author Arnett was trying to draw some correlation between that and the novel’s title.  I didn’t think about it too long because I could not find one.

The Summer of Robert Byron receives 2 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Koko

Koko by Peter Straub   576 pages

Peter Straub is considered one of the greatest thriller writers of our time; second only perhaps to the master Stephen King. Yet, somehow I missed never reading anything by Straub. Anchor Books re-released Koko, the first book in the “Blue Rose Trilogy” in 2009.

The Washington Post claimed that the 1988 work was “brilliantly written…an inspired thriller…(Straub’s) finest work.” I was ready, eager, anxious, and waiting when the almost six-hundred-page paperback landed on my doorstep.

I cancelled my evening plans and curled on the couch, ready to be scared out of my wits. The story opens with four Vietnam vets returning to Washington, D.C, for the dedication of Vietnam Memorial. The four hadn’t seen each other since they left the service in 1968. Shadowing the emotional events of the dedication, the men---now a doctor, a lawyer, a blue-collar worker, and a restaurateur---are drawn together with the resurgence of a serial killer.

The killer, Koko, could be either the writer Tim Underhill or M.O. Dengler or a Victor Spitlaney, from their old unit. But the four men are sure they are the only ones left alive. They decide to go back to Singapore and Bangkok, in search of their old Army buddies and to get to the bottom of the new murders, all seemingly unrelated.

That’s a great scenario, but fifteen days later, I’m still reading Koko. The story plodded along in agonizing detail. I read and read and read and read and read until my eyes burned. I wasn’t scared once nor did I find this “masterpiece” a page turner. When I finally did reach the last chapter, I have never been so disappointed in my life. Straub changed narration and basically ended the story with an “what happened? Nothing happened.” I know that is a set up for book two in the trilogy, but I don’t care enough to even bother learning what the other two titles are.

 I give this one out of five stars.