The Abstract, Tales of Wickedness and Sorrow

by Goodloe Byron

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0615150462
• ISBN13: 9780615150468
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Brown Bag
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Abstract: not about the Civil war

Hahahaha! J-Dogg is funny. I want some of whatever he is on, please The book I found in a coffee shop in Brooklyn. It was free so I started reading it. I haven't finished it yet--the main character is intensely self-absorbed and brutally funny. (But then I laugh at odd times; when the rest of the theater is about to burst into tears; when someone writes a non-sequitur review just to mess with people's heads; when Dick Cheney smiles.) You know, it's really laugh or scream a lot of the time.

A heroic war novel set in the Civil War

Published in 2007, 'The Abstract' is set in the American Civil War and the story is told by Brandon, a youth who joins up to march and fight and win glory. So they march, they camp, they eat short rations, they wait, they march. He broods and tortures himself during the tedium: Is he ready for war? Will he be brave? At first he does fight, but then he breaks and runs. He feels he is a coward, but to show for his part in the fight he has a wound. When he returns to his comrades they take him for something of a hero. The ebbing and eddying emotions of war are all here, the moods of individual men and the groupthink of the mob. His mother, sick with fear and already grieving her loss, packs the youth off to war. She advises him not to get into bad company (some soldiers have such bad attitude), and that she has put some of his favourite jam in his knapsack. The old-timers call the rookies 'fresh fish'; the fresh fish squabble and tell make-fool stories about the war they have not yet fought. Strangely, the author seems to be capable of doing everything he does well just as badly. His style often slips, and early on his inconsistent prose is often 'tell and not show', with many a stale simile and muddled metaphor. There is some awkward grammar (eg, chap. 3: 'There were perspiration and grumblings'.) Much of the dialogue is clipped and pungent, straight off the battle field, but some of it is overly lengthy, an incoherent yammering, and very uninteresting. All in all, a good but flawed war story; at somewhat over a hundred pages very suitable for school study.