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A review by ncarter5069
Cover by Jack Ketchum
4.0
Ketchum amazes me. This is the first book I’ve read of his, however, I have watched the film product of his screenplay with Lucky McKee called The Woman. He describes pain in such a way that you feel it, memory as if you were there, and the shocking truth of primal human nature that nobody wants to face. If you’re squeamish, don’t venture further into Ketchum’s work than this book, especially the movies he’s inspired. The greatest reason I appreciate Ketchum is for his shock value. Stephen King has called him “a horror writer’s writer,” and that’s the best way to put it.
“Tell the boy for me… tell him his daddy just got mean. That the war did that. Tell him he used to do combat – with civilians, with the police, whatever – that he’d go out looking for it, to set things up, in bars, places like that. You know. Tell him that was what I got to be. And that was why I couldn’t be with you out there. Explain to him, you know? When he’s old enough” (Cover, Ch. 1).
Jack Ketchum’s Cover is the story of a Vietnam vet whose necessary solidarity is disrupted by a famous writer, his two loves, a photographer and a couple of the writer’s old friends. The author describes the campers as rich, bringing the best quality tents, shotguns for casual hunting, and expensive photography equipment. Lee, simultaneously standing as our protagonist and antagonist, feels invaded by them being there. He’s paid to grow and tend this field of marijuana; his alcoholic rages have driven his wife and son away from him; and he has these terrible flashbacks of his time in the war – taking fire, endless blood, and the depravity of the choices he and others made.
By creating this tortured soldier, Ketchum has created a man reduced to merely his ability to survive rather than maintain any sort of quality of life. By the some light, the author paints a killer, unhinged and entirely too quick to draw blood rather than rationalize. “One day he’s in Nam, coming out of a hot LZ in a light chopper, antiaircraft fire all around, and the next night he’s standing in a Seattle bar,” (Cover, Ch. 11). Ketchum fuels his fire of a story with this terrible truth of Vietnam veterans being exposed to such terrible depravity who are then dropped back into society without as much as a job handed to them. America expected them to adjust without problem, when in actuality, the unnatural acts of violence they were exposed to drove a spike through who they once were and their notions of society were buried with their fellow soldiers.
From traps to crossbows to shotguns, the blood flows throughout the pages of cover, but Ketchum is quick to bring it back to the shock of the war and its effects on Lee. “And he stayed dead for days… stayed dead until they sent him home amid a pile of GI coffins,” (Cover, Ch. 29). While some readers would argue Lee’s final choice is the climax of the novel, I would argue that his final vision of the war stands as the final blow of the book; the shocking truth behind his fellow soldier, nicknamed Sprinkles, in a specifically grotesque massacre of a Vietnamese town. I won’t be revealing that vision, for it is for you to read and find out – but I can say that it’s probably the bluntest description of violence I’ve ever read in a novel.
All of that being said, Ketchum leaves you with questions: How do we, as readers, feel about sympathizing with a cold-blooded killer? How do we feel about war and its effects on the human psyche? And lastly, by creating a man driven to violence by his past, does Ketchum condone murder in his books, or simply employ violence to shock readers into realizing greater truths about themselves and the world around them? I stand by the latter.Cover gets a 4.5 out of 5 from me.
“Tell the boy for me… tell him his daddy just got mean. That the war did that. Tell him he used to do combat – with civilians, with the police, whatever – that he’d go out looking for it, to set things up, in bars, places like that. You know. Tell him that was what I got to be. And that was why I couldn’t be with you out there. Explain to him, you know? When he’s old enough” (Cover, Ch. 1).
Jack Ketchum’s Cover is the story of a Vietnam vet whose necessary solidarity is disrupted by a famous writer, his two loves, a photographer and a couple of the writer’s old friends. The author describes the campers as rich, bringing the best quality tents, shotguns for casual hunting, and expensive photography equipment. Lee, simultaneously standing as our protagonist and antagonist, feels invaded by them being there. He’s paid to grow and tend this field of marijuana; his alcoholic rages have driven his wife and son away from him; and he has these terrible flashbacks of his time in the war – taking fire, endless blood, and the depravity of the choices he and others made.
By creating this tortured soldier, Ketchum has created a man reduced to merely his ability to survive rather than maintain any sort of quality of life. By the some light, the author paints a killer, unhinged and entirely too quick to draw blood rather than rationalize. “One day he’s in Nam, coming out of a hot LZ in a light chopper, antiaircraft fire all around, and the next night he’s standing in a Seattle bar,” (Cover, Ch. 11). Ketchum fuels his fire of a story with this terrible truth of Vietnam veterans being exposed to such terrible depravity who are then dropped back into society without as much as a job handed to them. America expected them to adjust without problem, when in actuality, the unnatural acts of violence they were exposed to drove a spike through who they once were and their notions of society were buried with their fellow soldiers.
From traps to crossbows to shotguns, the blood flows throughout the pages of cover, but Ketchum is quick to bring it back to the shock of the war and its effects on Lee. “And he stayed dead for days… stayed dead until they sent him home amid a pile of GI coffins,” (Cover, Ch. 29). While some readers would argue Lee’s final choice is the climax of the novel, I would argue that his final vision of the war stands as the final blow of the book; the shocking truth behind his fellow soldier, nicknamed Sprinkles, in a specifically grotesque massacre of a Vietnamese town. I won’t be revealing that vision, for it is for you to read and find out – but I can say that it’s probably the bluntest description of violence I’ve ever read in a novel.
All of that being said, Ketchum leaves you with questions: How do we, as readers, feel about sympathizing with a cold-blooded killer? How do we feel about war and its effects on the human psyche? And lastly, by creating a man driven to violence by his past, does Ketchum condone murder in his books, or simply employ violence to shock readers into realizing greater truths about themselves and the world around them? I stand by the latter.Cover gets a 4.5 out of 5 from me.