This novel is set in Japan towards the beginning of America’s involvement in Vietnam. The war, as such, hasn’t started properly yet, but there are indications that the situation is escalating into that war. The book concerns the American military who are serving cushy tours of duty in Japan but who have the Vietnam potential conflict looming over them. The book is about their lives and loves.

This is a good idea. To the best of my knowledge, it hasn’t been done before, so the author has chosen a potentially interesting area to pursue. Unfortunately, I don’t think he quite masters that potential.

The book seems to be aiming at the Catch 22 style, without managing either the humour or the surrealism of that masterpiece. Unlike with the characters in Catch 22, I couldn’t get involved with any of Gill’s characters, with the one exception of Lieutenant Evans Roy Norris, whose crazed search for his departed (not meaning dead) lover is truly affecting. The rest of them are by no means cut-outs, these characters have genuine depth in their creation. It’s just that they all appeared to be grotesques.

I also have a problem with Gill’s style. He does a lot of the book in dialogue and I must admit to getting frequently lost as to who was saying what. When that starts to happen, it’s an irritant which gets more irritating as it goes on.

My other problem was in actually working out who was who. Despite my earlier comment about these characters having depth, I did find many of them somewhat indistinguishable form each other. And almost none of them was, again excepting Norris, likeable. Personally whether they got theirs in Vietnam or not, was a matter that meant less and less to me as the book went on.

From the plus side of the balance sheet I take a rather good portrait of a place and time that was unfamiliar to me. Of course there are American military living their military lives in-between times of conflict, of course there are. You don’t think of them though, only when a book like this comes along. And of course there are places in the world, including the UK, which rely for their prosperity on the military being there, conflict or no. And again, you don’t normally give them much attention. This book does and that’s definitely in its favour. I just wish more than one of the characters had been either sympathetic or felt more real.