“ Dear Mr. and Mrs. Staples, your son, Frank, did not return from a mission in Southeast Asia and is presumed missing in action…”

 Amaryllis is set in the Vietnam War where Frank is fighting to stay alive and away from drugs, while his little brother Jimmy is left in California with his dysfunctional family.

 Frank lived with his family in California; he has a girlfriend and lives at home. Frank is eighteen years of age when he unexpectedly signs up to join the army because he can’t stand his father; Frank is then flown to Vietnam to fight in a war that he doesn’t want to be a part of and runs into many complications.

Jimmy is Frank’s little brother. They both have a very strong bond with each other. When Frank goes to Vietnam, Jimmy is left with his family and struggles without him. Frank and Jimmy write many letters to each other throughout the story, describing what is going on in their very different lives. Jimmy and Frank both love to surf and have a good time.

Frank and Jimmy are best buds and brothers. They live in California with their mother and father. Their father is always frustrated, angry and drinks a lot while their mother is always working. Frank can’t stand living with his father so he decides to join the army leaving Jimmy at home. Frank writes letters to Jimmy describing the horrors of war and how scared he is of everything. Jimmy on the other hand can’t stop thinking of Frank and the terrible letter he writes. Jimmy also gets caught up in many calamities at home with his father and mother.

I loved this book because it kept me on my toes and I found it hard to put the book down. This book had one of the best descriptions of war I have ever read and there were always new complications arising.

I would recommend this story to anyone over the age of thirteen because it had coarse language and frequent usage of drugs.

 By: Lauchlan, Year: 9

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The book Amaryllis is about a boy named Jimmy and his family. Jimmy lives with his family, except his brother. Frank, Jimmy’s brother, left to go to war because he did not get along with his father at all. They were always fighting, and most of the time Frank would say something that outsmarted his dad, but Jim, his father, would tell him to ‘shut up’ and ‘go to his room’. This went on for a while in his household until Frank couldn’t take it anymore, so he left and joined the army and flew over to Vietnam. He still keeps in contact with his family via letters.  This goes on for a while until Frank gets shot. This caused conflict between the parents. After a while living in Vietnam, Frank gets addicted to drugs and tells Jimmy how he ‘has’ to take them to keep himself calm.

Towards the end of the book, it gets quite interesting and the family doesn’t quite know if he is alive or not.  So to sum this book up, it is about a boy who cannot stand his father and chooses the ‘easy way out’. He becomes addicted to drugs and cigarettes and gets very scared and worried if he made the right decision to move to Vietnam. Jon, Year 9

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‘Amaryllis’ is a book based in the 1960’s during the Vietnam War and that is the setting for this gripping story. A teenage boy by the name of Jimmy has a older brother who is enrolled in the army and is fighting over in Vietnam. Frank, Jimmy’s older brother faces many challenges over in Vietnam with the war: killing other human beings, fighting a war he disagrees with, the pain of getting shot, drug addiction and seeing his comrades get shot down in the middle of a fight, while Jimmy is back home dealing with his father and the thought that Frank is in Vietnam in a war. The book tells many stories through the main one, Jimmy speaks of a lot of things he did with Frank in the past or things they did together with the family, and at the beginning of each chapter there is a letter Frank has sent home from Vietnam to Jimmy. Over time you begin to learn that Frank starts to get a drug addiction because of all the things he has seen over in the war and Jimmy gets really worried and his friends can tell some things, but Jimmy doesn’t know how to tell his friend but then he meets Sally and for some reason he tells her everything that is going on with Frank and she listens and over the course of the next few chapters they become really good friends. Jimmy regularly rereads the notes by Frank and he has dreams about him quite frequently. Frank has many mixed feelings about the war but the main reason he went to Vietnam was to get away from his and Jimmy’s father because they always argue and fight with each other for hours on end and Frank sometimes mentions that Vietnam is better than being home arguing and fighting all the time but he say that he misses the beach and surfing. Near the end of the book Frank gets really scared and starts judging his whole life and his decision like was it a good idea to go to Vietnam? Was it worth it? etc. and this was mainly caused by all the drugs that he had taken. Will Frank make it out alive? You’ll have to find out by reading ‘Amaryllis’ by Craig Christ-Evans.

By Ryan Year 9