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Letting Loose: A Novel
Bobbo Starwick was missing in action in Vietnam for twenty-five years until his body was found and returned home to Rhymers Creek. Letting Loose is the story of three people forced to confront memories of Bobbo, especially his gay half-brother Barry, fought with conviction against the war that claimed his brother's life.
This chronicle of love and loss presents a generation raised in the shadow of the bomb and battered first by the Vietnam war and then by drugs and AIDS. From soldiers' bars in Quang Tri to gay clubs in New York City, from the passions of the 1960s to the uncertainties of the 1990s, this novel brilliantly examines the turbulent half-century leading towards the millennium.
This chronicle of love and loss presents a generation raised in the shadow of the bomb and battered first by the Vietnam war and then by drugs and AIDS. From soldiers' bars in Quang Tri to gay clubs in New York City, from the passions of the 1960s to the uncertainties of the 1990s, this novel brilliantly examines the turbulent half-century leading towards the millennium.
Hardcover
First published August 6, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 21, 2025
I went to a lot of trouble and expense to get hold of this novel because it was one I had wanted to read for a long time. That the novel was published by Zooland Books (now defunct) who published one of my favorite American authors, Jonathan Strong, only added to my sense of anticipation. Unfortunately almost from the first page I was unhappy and the reason for my growing disenchantment became clear when one character proclaims on the night of Regean's election, 'The seventies are over. Everything is going to change. It's going to a whole new ball game' which confirmed that this was going to be a novel as state of the nation report and also one of a long line of attempts by Americans to define 'were it all went wrong'.
I actually gathered together a large collection of novels, and films based on novels, which dealt with this loss of innocence and tracked how as time advances the point of disillusionment changes, from the The House of UnAmerican Activities of films like 'The Way Were' to the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam War of this novel and so many other novels and films. But I scrapped it all because this novel, though better than many of the novels I intended to quote is, though not badly written, not very good. 'Letting Loose' is trying for the catharsis of 'The Deer Hunter' but barely manages the bathos of 'Forrest Gump'.
I came pretty close to loathing this novel. When are Americans going to understand that the Vietnam
War (and this goes for later wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere) was not something done to America and American soldiers but was done by America and American soldiers to Vietnam and the Vietnamese people. If you are going to have as the catalyst of your novel a young 'golden' American boy who goes to Vietnam and becomes a monster who fucks Vietnamese women and then shoots them or massacres entire villages of men women and children and in the process drop kicks a baby like a football because they killed the American pilot of a plane dropping death from the sky on them, then you better open yourself up to novels about golden German boys who were destroyed by the horrors they suffered from partisans in WWII on the Eastern front.
I am also embarrassed now, in retrospect, when I read novels like this from 1996, by how little we, me, cared about all the other people dying of AIDS. It wasn't a gay plague but it is amazing how once effective medicines became available for white middle class gay men we all stopped protesting and marching. If the disease had affected only Haitians, drug addicts and other poor people I doubt we would have noticed it at all.
There is also a tremendous amount of misogyny in the novel and I do recognise that an author when writing about past times often has to give voice to views and attitudes that they don't hold and never
held. Unfortunately if a baby murdering rapist can be a lost golden boy I can't help feeling that the use of words like nymphomaniac to describe a woman behaving in a far less promiscuous way then any of the gay characters reflects authorial views.
I won't say I felt dirty after reading this novel but I did think I'd wasted my time.
I actually gathered together a large collection of novels, and films based on novels, which dealt with this loss of innocence and tracked how as time advances the point of disillusionment changes, from the The House of UnAmerican Activities of films like 'The Way Were' to the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam War of this novel and so many other novels and films. But I scrapped it all because this novel, though better than many of the novels I intended to quote is, though not badly written, not very good. 'Letting Loose' is trying for the catharsis of 'The Deer Hunter' but barely manages the bathos of 'Forrest Gump'.
I came pretty close to loathing this novel. When are Americans going to understand that the Vietnam
War (and this goes for later wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere) was not something done to America and American soldiers but was done by America and American soldiers to Vietnam and the Vietnamese people. If you are going to have as the catalyst of your novel a young 'golden' American boy who goes to Vietnam and becomes a monster who fucks Vietnamese women and then shoots them or massacres entire villages of men women and children and in the process drop kicks a baby like a football because they killed the American pilot of a plane dropping death from the sky on them, then you better open yourself up to novels about golden German boys who were destroyed by the horrors they suffered from partisans in WWII on the Eastern front.
I am also embarrassed now, in retrospect, when I read novels like this from 1996, by how little we, me, cared about all the other people dying of AIDS. It wasn't a gay plague but it is amazing how once effective medicines became available for white middle class gay men we all stopped protesting and marching. If the disease had affected only Haitians, drug addicts and other poor people I doubt we would have noticed it at all.
There is also a tremendous amount of misogyny in the novel and I do recognise that an author when writing about past times often has to give voice to views and attitudes that they don't hold and never
held. Unfortunately if a baby murdering rapist can be a lost golden boy I can't help feeling that the use of words like nymphomaniac to describe a woman behaving in a far less promiscuous way then any of the gay characters reflects authorial views.
I won't say I felt dirty after reading this novel but I did think I'd wasted my time.
November 20, 2017
I read this book for the first time about 10 years ago. It's not available in an e-book format, but I thought it would be good to revisit in this political climate. I was not disappointed. A little bit Forrest Gump, a little bit Apocalypse Now. Unflinching in its language and depictions of the Vietnam Era, Watergate, the gay rights movement, the sexual revolution, the AIDS epidemic, and the Reagan era, switching between rural West Virginia and New York City.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews