“Fred Vigeant’s The Last Vietnam Novel is a tricky wide-lens-and-tight-focus snapshot. No. That’s not exactly right. It’s more like a home movie, of a significant time in our not so distant past, possibly filmed by an off-kilter uncle with a sense of humor, who knew where to point the camera. There is a war present, but threat is ebbing, and in its place absurdity rears its goofy head. This is a smart book. A funny book, with a roster of believable oddball characters, each trying to navigate the treacherous land between the banal and the deadly, both states rendered with compelling authenticity through the lens of the life of Lieutenant Wonton Lovely”

“Fred Vigeant’s “The Last Vietnam Novel” is less a novel than a documentary, an encyclopedia of the Vietnam-era military experience. In its way, it’s an amazing achievement. Vigeant has a photographic memory, or he was a demon note-taker, or he has done prodigious research, or all three. Geezer veterans like me will be reminded of a thousand things we’ve forgotten and even learn a few new things. (For example, I finally know how the Americal Division, in which Vigeant served in 1971, got its name. And I found out that later versions of the jungle boots I wore had steel plates in their soles to protect against punji stakes.) Our descendants, if they ever get curious about what Great-Grandpa was doing in Southeast Asia back in that misbegotten time, will find a rich resource here, served up in short, crisp, often humorous chapters.

Vigeant’s protagonist, Lt. Wonton Lovely, has no peculiarities except for his name. In fact, he’s as close to a cipher as the hero of a fairly long novel can be. This isn’t a flaw in execution, exactly. It’s a calculated gamble Vigeant took in order to make Lt. Lovely represent the millions who served. He’s young and naive, but he’s not a fool — even a holy fool — or a victim. He isn’t the Good Soldier Schweik or Billy Pilgrim or Yossarian. In Vietnam he proves to be a decent, unassuming person. Wounded on his first combat patrol, then sidelined by a pending, if absurd, court-martial case against him (involving the disposal of slugs used in slot machines), he deals semi-competently with a series of inconsequential rear-echelon jobs. We feel that he would have coped just as well with more vital jobs if he’d had the chance.

As Vigeant says, Lovely “just went, survived, returned, and went about his business, as do most veterans of any war.””

“Author [Fred] Vigeant tells an entertaining story of an ordinary, average guy set against a backdrop of dramatic and traumatic global events. While I’ve never read anything else quite like it, the mixture of wry humor and irony reminded me a tiny bit of Kurt Vonnegut — think Billy Pilgrim in “Slaughterhouse Five,” minus the aliens and time travel. At the same time, the descriptions of the characters, locales and events seemed absolutely real and true, reflecting the absurdity found in both normal life and tragic circumstances. One of those delightful novels you wish could go on longer. Well done.”