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A review by jeannemixon
MASH: A Novel about Three Army Doctors by Richard Hooker
4.0
I saw the movie and the tv series but had never read the novel. At first I thought well this is going to be kind of boring because I know the whole plot. But it wasn't. The novel sounds more like a doctor who worked in the Korean War and made some friends and knew some wild guys wrote it up with a lot of embellishments. The stories are similar or the same in many cases with some interesting differences. I have always hated the shower scene and the microphones in the tent scene where Houlihan and Frank Burns are having sex so that it can be broadcast across the base. Both scenes cross the line from cute into humiliating and sadistic. Houlihan might be a tight ass, but she does not deserve to be exposed naked in shower in front of a group of howling clapping men. And while the houlihan and the Frank Burns characters are repellent, their sex lives should have been off limits. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that neither scene came from the book. The worst Houlihan gets is an occasional snide "hot lips" comment. The movie character Frank Burns is a composite of two book characters both of whom are run out, but neither of whom is treated sadistically.
Which is not to say the book is nicey nice. Women are still treated largely as sex objects. There is one chaplain they don't like who is treated sadistically, rather spectacularly. It's interesting too that the movie exaggerated the sex abuse and some of the sadism while cutting out some of the anti Christian sentiment.
But the book also deals with traumatic stress and the difficulties of the families left behind in the US. The characters drink not to be cool, but to anesthetize themselves. They have bouts of depression. Also there is actual surgery in the book, described in depth, which was really interesting. It is not just a soap opera set in a war, but an in-depth description of meatball versus stateside surgery.
Which is not to say the book is nicey nice. Women are still treated largely as sex objects. There is one chaplain they don't like who is treated sadistically, rather spectacularly. It's interesting too that the movie exaggerated the sex abuse and some of the sadism while cutting out some of the anti Christian sentiment.
But the book also deals with traumatic stress and the difficulties of the families left behind in the US. The characters drink not to be cool, but to anesthetize themselves. They have bouts of depression. Also there is actual surgery in the book, described in depth, which was really interesting. It is not just a soap opera set in a war, but an in-depth description of meatball versus stateside surgery.