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Apr 18, 2015gendeg rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
"It’s not that there’s one thing I want people to understand about this war so much as I want people engaged with it. If you’re an American citizen, it’s your war. It’s not the soldier’s war, or the Marine’s war. The soldier and the Marine do not issue themselves orders." - Phil Klay in a Q&A. The writing and storytelling here are excellent. The collection has a rawness and earnestness that winds you up and stays with you for days. What is the emotional reality of combat in the modern age? Violent and disorienting, of course, but also banal, chaotic, and inane—all of it captured simply and without ornamentation in Phil Klay’s debut collection. Don't pity the soldier, the veteran, it seems to say; pity oversimplifies the experience. I came out of reading this more aware and filled with respect. No heroes here, no lionizing, or glossing over. Just people dealing with the experience and the aftermath. A disquieting emotional punch for sure, but we should be disquieted, we should be unnerved. The war may be history, officially for the ages (March 20, 2003-December 15, 2011), but it still resonates—as it should—and it haunts many more others.