Exit A, Anthony Swofford
Exit A, Anthony Swofford
1 Rating(s)
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Exit A

Author: Anthony Swofford

Narrator: John Slattery

Unabridged: 8 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/09/2007


Synopsis

Anthony Swofford follows his international best-seller Jarhead with an unforgettable first novel -- a powerful story about a youth spent on a U.S. air base in Japan and the gritty neon streets just outside it, where the Japanese underworld lurks and a rebellious young girl finds herself in great danger........

Seventeen-year-old Severin Boxx, an earnest, muscular high-school-football star, lives on an American air force base on the outskirts of Tokyo. Severin is mad for Virginia Kindwall, the base general's daughter, who is a hafu -- half American and half Japanese. Beautiful, smart, and utterly defiant of her father, Virginia has become a petty criminal in the Japanese underground.

Severin is soon caught up in Virginia's world, and together they drift through the mad neon landscape outside the walls of the base, near the busy Haijima rail station, a place of movement, anonymity, and sudden disappearance. Exit A is one of its many shadowy doorways. Severin and Virginia fall into trouble way over their heads and are soon subjected to the enormous, unforgiving tensions between America and Japan. Years later, Severin and Virginia remain lost to each other, until an emotionally frayed, thirty- something Severin embarks on a quest to find Virginia -- and the part of himself taken from him when his boyhood abruptly ended.

Darkly irreverent, frankly erotic, at once suspenseful and emotionally overwhelming, Swofford's Exit A builds inexorably toward a climax as it audaciously plumbs the legacies of war, the wish for redemption, and the danger of love..........

About Anthony Swofford

Anthony Swofford served in a U.S. Marine Corps Surveillance and Target Acquisition/Scout-Sniper platoon during the Gulf War. After the war, he was educated at American River College; the University of California, Davis; and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has taught at the University of Iowa and Lewis and Clark College. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, Harper's, Men's Journal, The Iowa Review, and other publications. A Michener-Copernicus Fellowship recipient, he lives in New York.

About John Slattery

John Slattery has starred on Broadway in Rabbit Hole, Betrayal, and Laughter on the 23rd Floor. Off-Broadway credits include Three Days of Rain (L.A. Critics Award, Drama Desk nom.), and The Lisbon Traviata. On television he has been seen in Ed, K Street, Sex & the City, and Will & Grace. Films include Flags of Our Fathers, Mona Lisa Smile, The Station Agent,Traffic, and Sleepers.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Crt on July 14, 2015

Quite enjoyed this, starts off in. U.S. Air Force Base in Japan, sort of follows the lives of two kids.........more

Goodreads review by Olivia on July 29, 2023

It took me a while to get into but then I suddenly got totally gripped, and it wouldn't let go!......more

Goodreads review by Royce on December 07, 2020

Promising start, disappointing finish. Swofford's writing is clear but the characters are all flawed and unlikable/unappealing.......more

Goodreads review by Maria Ella on May 24, 2012

When you are trapped, would you wait it out? Or would you find a way to get out? Swofford takes another turn as he made his debut novel - a different genre from his memoirs as a marine. From Jarhead to Exit A, he put an element of first love, of Bonnie and Clyde and of conflict between nations. St......more

Goodreads review by Holly on July 26, 2020

I would give this a 2.5 if the system allowed. I enjoyed reading this book casually though it did not necessarily pull me in. The characters could have been much more fleshed out.......more