For those in the battlefields
war is always hell
THE OTHER MAN
By Kevin Dooley
Baico Publishing Consultants Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-897357-59-0
Reviewed by Catholine Butler
The Other Man is author Kevin Dooley's second published novel, the first in The Angira Trilogy.
The novel centres around Marteen Reade, a soldier, lowly medic and clerk whose life reveals the hell of war.
He is the little guy in the trenches who suffers all the anguish and horror who continues to live afterwards haunted in his own private hell, neglected and forgotten. On the other hand, the big guys who orchestrate the war but never face any personal danger, they don't lose a beat as they continue on their merry way after the conflict.
There are the characters in The Other Man, which requires some reading concentration but the moral of the story is that war, no matter how modern, still produces legions of traumatized soldiers. It is only now that the symptoms are more readily recognized and psychological treatment is available.
I recently spoke with Kevin Dooley about The Other Man. He explained the name of book's title saying, "In the first part of the book, the soldiers are in the regimental mess and they see a picture on the wall.
"One of the soldiers in the mess, named Colm Dunne, bears a striking resemblance to the man in the picture, Private Marteen Reade. Irish-born Private Marteen Reade, a decorated soldier, died in prison in disgrace and was buried in a prison cemetery.
"The old women in the mess spot this resemblance and hook Colm Dunne to the picture and then Dunne gets to tell the story of Marteen Reade.
"So Reade is the other man, and Dunne transmitting the story is the other man. It's a metaphor for loss. Another way to describe that would be men who came back from the war were often not the same men that went to war.
"The women often would say, 'He's not the same man, that went to war, he's another man that came back'.
"Even the men who came back from war with no psychogical problems were haunted by what they had witnessed in the war.
"The book is fiction but it is based on historical reality. The conditions in the book did happen, particularly about the soldiers who returned and became long-term mental patients.
"There are still men in mental hospitals from the war in Korea, 60 years later, and they will die there. Now we have more injured soldiers that are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan - the cycle continues."
Irish-born Kevin Dooley now lives and writes in Ottawa, Ontario. His book The Other Man can be purchased through Chapters.ca, Coles or Indigo, or by e-mailing: dooleyfamily@rogers.com.
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