The end of my life
by Vance Bourjaily
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Description
Vance Bourjaily's classic novel of World War II dramatizes an entire generation's loss of innocence When Thomas "Skinner" Galt leaves Greenwich Village to volunteer as an ambulance driver with the British Army, he anticipates the adventure of a lifetime. What he fails to understand is that no matter where he comes from or how many books he has read, once he dons a military uniform, his life will cease to be his own. Stationed first in the Middle East and then in Italy, Skinner and his show more fellow American volunteers, Rod, Freak, and Benny, endure boredom, fear, and the exquisite frustration of following orders. They seek solace in their friendship with one another and in the debauched diversions available to men during wartime. But as the days and nights drag on, Skinner begins to drift away from his comrades--and from himself. Too late, he discovers that the path he has chosen leads only to tragedy. Inspired by Vance Bourjaily's experiences as an ambulance driver in the American Field Service and commissioned by legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, The End of My Life marked the arrival of a writer heralded by the New York Times as "a Dostoevsky of the generation that came of age in World War II." Elegant, spare, and fiercely honest, this is a timeless portrait of the devastating effects of war on the human spirit. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
458. The End of my Life, by Vance Bourjaily (read 23 Jan 1953) I was on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean when I read this book in January of 1953. On Jan 17, 1953, I said of it to myself: "The End of My Life is a novel of an intellectual soldier who is utterly lost in life. Rather interesting, and fairly well-written but idea content is repulsive." I finished the book on Jan 23, 1953, but the foregoing is the only comment I made on the book while reading it. There were lots of other things going on and my reading in the book did not get mentioned again.
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Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction, Historical Fiction, Fantasy
- DDC/MDS
- 813.54 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999
- LCC
- PS3503 .O77 .E5 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Individual authors 1900-1960
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 33
- Popularity
- 855,821
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 5
