Kindle. A reductive, generic take on wartime tedium with Sài Gòn as a backdrop. The American-GI bloke is a vehicle mechanic from Wisconsin in the rear with the gear who never does any maintenance. The Vietnamese girl has little backstory and no specificity; purely essentialised. She provides the obvious services and he the fretting. Rabe appropriated the less interesting aspects of Kim Vân Kieu. The characters are bland and the writing is banal.
Goodreads was generally unimpressed. Philip Caputo at the New York Times: Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992).
