Our history/historical fiction book club is meeting soon and chose
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, an amazing book that I read in one sitting, wrenching me out of my reading slump.
The book is fiction, but written as an intertwining collection of short stories with a "memoir-like" feel to it, even though it jumps from one point of view to another. The primary narrator is a Vietnam veteran named Tim O’Brien, who has a squishy relationship to the author because it is fiction, not really memoir or autobiography. This gives the whole narrative a real but unreal tone, which meshes with the narrator’s ruminations on the telling of war stories and how-impossible- it-is-to-get-at-the-truth-but-it’s-all-true. It has an immediate feel, even when a character is looking back, and an honest feeling whether or not it’s true.
Each chapter is a story in itself, anecdotes about a company of soldiers in Vietnam. Reminiscent in a way of
All Quiet on the Western Front, these are very young men who don’t really have a "big picture" view of the war, who are focused on personal survival and the survival of their buddies. It shows the awfulness of war: its tedium, terror, discomfort, dehumanization, guilt, and ongoing trauma, as well as the closeness of the interpersonal bonds and the giddiness that comes with surviving.
The writing is beautifully stark and evocative. The characters, though presented in snapshots, end up fully realized.
Even for those who don’t think they would be interested in Vietnam War fiction (I didn’t think I would be), this book is a
should-read.
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