I had been aware of this book for sometime but never really got around to it. Picked it up at HPB a few months ago knowing I should read it at some point and finally did. These are just some of my initial thoughts.
First, a 5/5. It was a really powerful, touching, and well written book. It reminded me a bit of vonnegut in some ways such as the writing style, the black humor, and the use of repetition.
When I started reading it I was at first a little disappointed to find out it was historical fiction but as I made my way through the book I appreciated why he wrote it that way. To paraphrase, “all of it’s true and none of it is”.
I’m very privileged and fortunate enough to have never had to experience this hardship. I’m going to tread lightly and I mean no ill intentions here but this book helped me empathize more with those who’ve had these experiences. I certainly will never truly know, but this book really conveyed the emotions, mundaneness, absurdity, and loss of war, to me at least.
I also felt that this book could be read as a little beyond just war stories. “It’s nobody’s fault. Everybody’s.” I think this applies to even those outside of a war. No one in particular may be responsible for the harms in our world. Collectively we all are. This may be a bit if a stretch but that’s how I interpreted it.
So it goes.
by Dont_quote_me_onthat
2 Comments
I met him years ago at a reading where I worked. The audience was mostly high school and adult students and teachers who were doing creative writing programs- people from a lot of backgrounds. So I don’t know how much he knew the details of his audience, but I was there with a refugee group and our students were mostly English language learners and GED / literacy students who had come out of war zones. This was during the build up to the Iraq invasion also and several young men in our program had met with recruiters on the adult school campus who were offering them paths to citizenship if they joined up. I don’t know how much OBrien knew about all this (maybe nothing) but he made statements about war and memoir that really resonated with some of those kids and they ended up not joining as a result.
I read his stuff pretty early in life and it really landed: *If I Die In a Combat Zone* and *Going After Cacciato*.