E’s Reviews > From Here to Eternity > Status Update

I've never been so affected by a character's death as I have here. Jesus, I'm fuckin weeping, genuinely sobbing, over someone who doesn't exist.

Only five more chapters to go

All this foreshadowing about Pearl Harbor makes these characters seem psychic, which is odd as hell given how realistic the rest of the book is. Jones keeps saying stuff like "who's gonna bomb us? The Japanese?" Or "only thing crazier than that would be if the japanese bomb this island." It's an odd choice, to say the least.

Chapters are getting shorter and shorter.

November 28, 1941. Hell is coming. I had no idea Hawaii was expecting an attack before Pearl Harbor happened. I had no idea about a lot of stuff in this book, mainly how fuckin boring army life is during peacetime.

Part 5: The Reenlistment Blues. Less than 200 pages left now.

Goodbye, my friend.

I love how Jones understands people peopling and why people people. Karen and Milt hating to love each other but not being able to do either comfortably, Prew and Maggio bullshittin while all the while they're wildin toward wild disaster, Bloom all by himself without a care in his head (too soon?). Just great goddamn characters, the whole mangy lot.

Not many long books, tomes over 709 pages, consistently get better the further along you read. Some lag in the middle, others pick up pace only to fizzle out after 100+ pages of falling action, and some remain middling to good throughout. This is one of those rare kitten-squishers that gets better and better chapter after chapter. How. The fuck?