The Innocent

Robert Taylor's remarkable first novel is one of the best gay novels - hell, best novels -- to come out of the Vietnam disaster. Read today, against the background of another political debacle, it's like deja vu all over again.

Robert Taylor's The Innocent is truly a stunning novel. That it is his first published novel makes his achievement all the more significant. Although the story is told in the first person by an intelligence officer stationed in Vietman during the darkest days of that conflct, and although his story is also about his love for a beautiful young Vietnamese man, the novel is more than a book about being gay in the Army or about the Vietnam war. Because Robert Taylor writes from the soul, and because he draws on the wellsprings of the deepest human sensitivities, the novel draws the reader into self-examination of what it means to be human in an inhumane world and what love means when the value of human life and deep personal relationships are turned upside down by rigid stereotypes and human cruelty. This is not escapist pap. Be prepared to have to think, to feel deeply, perhaps to be challenged in some of your most private and intimate assumptions about your own life and values.

Interesting the variability of the preceding reviews. Personally, I like this first novel very much, could connect with the narrator easily, could empathize with his situation, and, to my surprise, found his broken-english narrative for Nanh, the Vietnamese lover, to be natural and non-condescending. I have few qualifications for rating this book on the basis of verisimilitude other than that my own partner is Vietnamese/Chinese. I found Nanh's mother's views on Vietnamese history far from didactic (although being so would not be a sin) and fascinating. It has made me want to look into it further. (Wish I could connect with my "mother-in-law" so intimately.) And the conclusion was gritty, somewhat unsatisfying (as it must have been for the protagonist), and thoroughly believable.I read it, by the way, in a single sitting: couldn't put it down. I will read it again.

Although some may consider this book gay literature, it is much, much more than that. It is also a thoughtful and sensitive examination of our role in Vietnam. Its insights may disturb you, may even make you angry, but you will learn from it. And you will be moved. The ending is absolutely perfect.

This first novel is a very well written story that follows a gay man's experiences in Vietnam. I thought that this book would be the same old story about gays in the military but it offers a very unique perspective. Through the eyes of Matthew Fairchild, an office administrator in the Vietnam War, we are eloquently lead through the war from a gay man's experiences. His affair with a young Vietnamese boy is tenderly rendered but it is only secondary to other significant aspects of the war such as physical endurance, death, and the culture of the Vietnamese people. I highly recommend this book.