THE PERIMETER OF LIGHT: Short Fiction and...

THE PERIMETER OF LIGHT: Short Fiction and Other Writing About the Vietnam War edited by Vivian Vie Balfour (New Rivers Press: $15.95; 302 pp . , illustrated, paperback original). Balfour mixes fiction with reportage in this uneven anthology, but fails to tell the reader which is which. The stories about soldiers in Vietnam invariably reflect an anti-war point of view, but the sections describing people at home watching news reports of carnage in a distant land depict the controversial time more even-handedly. In “Home of the Brave,” Judith Hougen recalls, “Vietnam was like a dark coat I wore all during childhood, a ten pound weight held so close to me I didn’t know myself without it, couldn’t understand my new equilibrium when it first lifted away.”