Urrea pays moving tribute to his mother and her Clubmobile comrades whose wartime service was largely forgotten ... Sweeping ... Morally nuanced ... Urrea has written yet another powerful 'border story' after all: this time about the border between those who live in blessed ignorance of the worst humankind can do and those who keep that knowledge to themselves, often locked in silence.
Urrea’s newest novel is a complete change of pace ... Camaraderie and joy infuse the novel ... Bound to become a classic of war fiction. Urrea provides a loving portrait of women asked to do the impossible. It’s a complex portrait of what happens to those tender souls who learn to don armor against daily horrors only to find themselves trapped in an emotional iron cage.
Genial yet gimlet-eyed ... Kicks off as a boisterous romp, spiked with repartee and good cheer ... Like a tightrope artist, Urrea keeps narrative forces in balance, the slang of naïve America in tension with the atrocities of combat. He pivots off not just historical fiction but also genre romance, as sparks fly between Irene and dashing bomber pilot Hans. Urrea captures the period and its people ... A fleet-footed performance by a generous craftsman, underscoring the contributions made by the Greatest Generation's women.
Urrea writes about death with a sort of familiarity, a suspension of judgment that highlights the absurdity inherent in extreme violence ... Irene’s perspective dominates the novel, but Urrea frequently slips into Dorothy’s head, and sometimes uses an omniscient narrator to foreshadow events of which Irene and Dorothy are unaware. When he returns to Irene, it’s as if his naturally fluid voice is forcing itself into a limited third-person straitjacket ... Urrea has a weakness for melodramatic imagery ... The novel is much stronger where it homes in on Irene’s experience.
With cinematic verisimilitude and deep emotional understanding, Urrea opens readers’ eyes to the female Red Cross volunteers who served overseas during WWI ... WWII fiction fans, who have an abundance of options, should embrace Urrea’s vivid, hard-hitting novel about the valiant achievements of these unsung wartime heroines.
Urrea, not unlike Orwell, writes with a vivid sense of moral outrage ... As a war novel, Good Night, Irene must move through a variety of registers, reflecting exhaustion and elation as well as gut-churning existential fear. Urrea is more effective at the former than the latter; his battle scenes can seem unnecessarily extended, overplayed. So, too, the book’s closing section, which... ultimately feels more melodramatic than it should ... Good Night, Irene is moving and affecting, featuring characters with whom we cannot help but engage
Remarkable, elegantly written ... This material is personal for Urrea, whose mother served in the Clubmobile Corps, and a few sentimental notes slip into the story. But there’s plenty of grit, detail, and twists that make for both a fine page-turner and an evocation of war’s often cruel randomness. Top-shelf historical fiction delivered with wit and compassion.
