The Nam Shadow
Carole Brungar’s sequel to her popular The Nam Legacy is excellent testimony to the need for a good editor. With a critical second opinion, her self-published romance might have avoided many of the traps it falls straight into.
The Nam Shadow follows several of the same characters as her first novel. Jack Cade has died and his daughter survives. His wife, Evelyn, is a Kiwi entertainer beloved of the troops serving in Vietnam. The sequel now pursues soldier Terry Edwards and photographer Frankie Proctor whose lives intertwine around their love and around the deadly effect of the poison, dioxin, that was used so widely and carelessly.
The central idea is good. Not a lot of fiction has been written about Kiwi soldiers in Vietnam. In particular, Brungar’s exploration of the consequences of Agent Orange is a fertile field that deserves deep treatment. Unfortunately, this is not what Brungar gives it.
The war, the poison, and its insidious, long-term impact on the soldiers’ health, had a traumatic effect on those who survived. These concerns are largely jettisoned in favour of an implausible and sentimentalised love affair, despite Terry and Frankie being inherently interesting characters.
The first half of the novel deals with the conflict itself. In this, Brungar competes with a wealth of fiction on Vietnam. The visceral realism of Karl Marlantes’ Matterhorn and the philosophic foundation of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried are absent. In their place, Brungar is happy to tell us: ‘‘She had been in Vietnam just over six months now, and had seen some horrific sights.’’ Some firefights are described, but the detail tends to be sketchy and perfunctory. The real sounds, smells, noise and feel of battle tend to be glossed over.
A good editor would have earned their money in advising on structural issues. First to go would be the plethora of utterly incredible coincidences. There are seven in the book, each of which stretches credulity too far.
Next for attention would be the dialogue. Most of it is flat and sanitised. Men – particularly those in battle – simply don’t talk as if they have stepped out of the pages of Boys’ Own. Occasionally, Brungar slips in an expletive, as if she herself knows she needs more.
An editor would also focus on the language. Out would go the cliches (‘‘the heat hit her like a blast from a furnace’’) and the cliched descriptions. Terry is characterised as ‘‘tall and devastatingly good-looking, with his sun-bleached hair and tanned skin’’ – straight out of Mills and Boon. In would come more figurative touches and a greater sensitivity to the details of place.
The novel staggers through to a final burst of sheer sentimentality: ‘‘life couldn’t have been any richer or more filled with love. Everything in their world was perfect.’’ Oh no, it wasn’t.