Exit A

Book Cover
Average Rating
Publisher:
Simon & Schuster Audio
Pub. Date:
2007
Edition:
Unabridged
Language:
English
Description
Seventeen-year-old Severin Boxx lives on Yokota, an enormous American air force base on the outskirts of Tokyo that is home to fourteen thousand U.S. soldiers and a large contingent of long-range nuclear bombers. Just outside the base lies the busy Haijima rail station. Exit A is one of the many doorways into this place of movement, anonymity, and sudden disappearance. Much of the novel's action transpires in the netherworld around Exit A, a mad neon landscape of noodle shops, strip clubs, sushi joints, pawnshops, whorehouses, sake fountains, military surplus stores, tattoo parlors, hash bars, comic book stores, pachinko parlors, fish shops, and alleys -- "the alleys that all lead somewhere, usually down." It's here, not long before the Gulf War begins, that we first meet Severin, an earnest, muscular high-school-football star and son of a base colonel. Like most of the other young American men on the air base, 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 a father who wields godlike military power, Virginia has become a petty criminal in the Japanese underground. Severin is soon caught up in Virginia's world. But theirs is not a typical high school romance; they fall into trouble way over their heads and are quickly subjected to the enormous, unforgiving tensions between America and Japan -- a relationship still informed by the long shadows of World War II and America's use of the atomic bomb. 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, in so doing, the part of himself taken from him when his boyhood abruptly ended. Like Jarhead before it, Anthony Swofford's Exit A is darkly irreverent, frankly erotic, and more than a little wicked, a tale told in a brooding, pained voice filled with the simple human fury of being alive. It is, in sum, a first novel in full. Building inexorably toward a climax that is at once suspenseful and emotionally overwhelming, Anthony Swofford's fiction debut is a triumph.
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Grouping Information

Grouped Work ID449b5a91-7e3e-3be9-72b6-bcb6a7c2df2b
Grouping Titleexit a
Grouping Authoranthony swofford
Grouping Categorybook
Grouping LanguageEnglish (eng)
Last Grouping Update2024-01-26 15:04:47PM
Last Indexed2024-03-28 23:18:51PM

Solr Fields

accelerated_reader_point_value
0
accelerated_reader_reading_level
0
auth_author2
Slattery, John
author
Swofford, Anthony
author2-role
Slattery, John,reader
hoopla digital
author_display
Swofford, Anthony
display_description
Seventeen-year-old Severin Boxx lives on Yokota, an enormous American air force base on the outskirts of Tokyo that is home to fourteen thousand U.S. soldiers and a large contingent of long-range nuclear bombers. Just outside the base lies the busy Haijima rail station. Exit A is one of the many doorways into this place of movement, anonymity, and sudden disappearance. Much of the novel's action transpires in the netherworld around Exit A, a mad neon landscape of noodle shops, strip clubs, sushi joints, pawnshops, whorehouses, sake fountains, military surplus stores, tattoo parlors, hash bars, comic book stores, pachinko parlors, fish shops, and alleys -- "the alleys that all lead somewhere, usually down." It's here, not long before the Gulf War begins, that we first meet Severin, an earnest, muscular high-school-football star and son of a base colonel. Like most of the other young American men on the air base, 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 a father who wields godlike military power, Virginia has become a petty criminal in the Japanese underground. Severin is soon caught up in Virginia's world. But theirs is not a typical high school romance; they fall into trouble way over their heads and are quickly subjected to the enormous, unforgiving tensions between America and Japan -- a relationship still informed by the long shadows of World War II and America's use of the atomic bomb. 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, in so doing, the part of himself taken from him when his boyhood abruptly ended. Like Jarhead before it, Anthony Swofford's Exit A is darkly irreverent, frankly erotic, and more than a little wicked, a tale told in a brooding, pained voice filled with the simple human fury of being alive. It is, in sum, a first novel in full. Building inexorably toward a climax that is at once suspenseful and emotionally overwhelming, Anthony Swofford's fiction debut is a triumph.
format_category_eh
Audio Books
eBook
format_eh
eAudiobook
id
449b5a91-7e3e-3be9-72b6-bcb6a7c2df2b
isbn
9780743563512
last_indexed
2024-03-29T05:18:51.683Z
lexile_score
-1
literary_form
Fiction
literary_form_full
Fiction
local_time_since_added_eh
Six Months
Year
primary_isbn
9780743563512
publishDate
2007
publisher
Simon & Schuster Audio
recordtype
grouped_work
subject_facet
Detective and mystery fiction
Fiction
Literature -- Fiction
title_display
Exit A
title_full
Exit A [electronic resource] / Anthony Swofford
title_short
Exit A
topic_facet
Literature

Solr Details Tables

item_details

Bib IdItem IdShelf LocCall NumFormatFormat CategoryNum CopiesIs Order ItemIs eContenteContent SourceeContent URLDetailed StatusLast CheckinLocation
hoopla:MWT11518092Online Hoopla CollectionOnline HooplaeAudiobookAudio Books1falsetrueHooplahttps://www.hoopladigital.com/title/11518092?utm_source=MARC&Lid=hh4435Available Online

record_details

Bib IdFormatFormat CategoryEditionLanguagePublisherPublication DatePhysical DescriptionAbridged
hoopla:MWT11518092eAudiobookAudio BooksUnabridgedEnglishSimon & Schuster Audio20071 online resource (1 audio file (10hr., 30 min.)) : digital.

scoping_details_eh

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hoopla:MWT11518092Available OnlineAvailable Onlinefalsetruefalsefalsefalsefalse