Possibly one of the very best..., 25 Feb 2008
A truly, truly remarkable collection of short stories. I am not generally a short story reader, but the title so intrigued me I had to give it a go. I was stunned. I was left speechless. The prose is wonderful, and the sheer simplicity with which he brings about an understanding of what it was like to be an American teenager, and then suddenly, almost inexplicably, you are in the middle of Hell. I cannot say enough good things about this book. I truly, truly, truly loved it. Wonderful!

Truer as Fiction, 20 Jul 2007
Is it possible to be honest when the truth is unknown, and which truth anyway would we choose to tell if we knew it?
The Things They Carried is a book about the Viet Nam war, a war aided by GI Tim O'Brien. It is not a collection of short stories, it is not a novel. It is imagined truth trying to tell a story bigger than itself, and succeeding through the medium of fiction.
O'Brien writes with a simplicity that is profound. He is a magician pulling - not rabbits out of hats - but meaning from experience. After college he was summoned to fight a war in a foreign country. He didn't believe in the war and he didn't want to die and he struggled to decide on how to react to his draft papers.
He went to war.
Viet Nam becomes a kind of mist, partly collective, partly personal. O'Brien mixes fact with story telling to carve some kind of route through the mist. Places - Song Tra Bong, Quang Ngai, My Khe - become recurring characters, characters who seep into the landscape:

'He was under the mud and the water, folded in with the war, and their only thought was to find him and dig him out and then move on to some place dry and warm.'
(In the Field, p 163)

The reader joins O'Brien in his mist and the mist begins to make sense. It makes the sense of dimly remembered personal and collective truths. We go to war with the writer, recognising the humanity within through the horror without. We don't have to leave our armchairs to do this. It is, partly at least, the war of retaining a sense of honour in a world that mocks honour; a war with ourselves that can only be survived by the slow process of separating what is true from what is false. We are encouraged to observe the illusion of fact, to find the story. But to honour also our need to distance ourselves from human acts of inhumanity - our own and those of others.
On occasion O'Brien attributes acts of shame to others only to confess later it was his weakness that cost the life of a friend. He is honest enough to lie, sensitive enough to reflect and ultimately brave enough to share his darkness in public. Here, the process involved in being weak to be strong, in finding power through honesty, unfolds with grace - like the petals of some carnivorous plant.

'"Takes guts, I know that."
"It wasn't guts. I was scared."
Kiowa shrugged "Same difference."
(The Lives of the Dead, p 223)

It is tempting to seek to classify this book into some containable genre, something to make the journey feel safer. It is a war story; it is autobiography; it is fable or horror. It is all those things and therefore it is more. Quietly, The Things They Carried melds the concept of genre into insignificance. The book is a tour de force. Relax into it, read it as an epic poem - above all listen to it. This is a profound book telling the truth in the only way humans can understand truth - through fiction.

Funny as well as sad, 19 Apr 2007
Somewhere between a short story collection and a novel, somewhere between fiction and memories is Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, a wonderful book about a terrible war.

O'Brien takes us into the life and minds of soldiers in a fashion rarely witnessed in fiction. Most characters in the book come alive and some of them the reader gets to really feel bad for when things go wrong. It's also a book with a wonderfully funny, in a strange way, story like the Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, a great story on it's own. It is also placed in the right order of stories in the book to have maximum effect, both on it's own and in a way to make the other stories more effective. We also have notes that can shock the reader. "Speaking of Courage was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa." (Page 155)

An amazing book, 06 Jul 2005
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED is a powerful memoir in the form of a collection of short stories about the haunting life of Tim O'Brien and a company of soldiers in Vietnam.
The Things They Carried was a thought-provoking and inspirational book. This highly vivid description of the Vietnam War kept me reading through the night until the last page. I am not a big reader but once I picked up this book I was reading for hours! This book gives a taste of Vietnam for those who were not there. The interesting thing about this book is that it tells the true life of the soldiers giving us a better idea of what the soldiers went, and what war really is. One comes close to understanding how the feelings from going to war, leaving their families behind them, losing loved friends, killing another man, and how the pathetic nature of the foods and sleeping conditions; all traumas of war that can change a human being forever.

If you like war novels, then this is a must read. Even if you don't like war books and think they're all the same, read this and you will reconsider. One thing for sure is that you will appreciate the style of writing and the way it makes you think. You still get to laugh despite the deaths and destructions. The soldiers seem to taunt life with life and death games. Written with a deep message and in a manner similar to CHEKHOV AND TISI JANVIER, this anthology of related short stories about the Vietnam War portrays men who faced their fears, confronted danger, came out alive but became scarred for life.

BRUTAL HONESTY, 15 Jan 2002
The first thing that grabbed me about O'Brien's collection of short stories about the Vietnam war, was the stark realism. This is an exploration of the human condition rather than a war story per se. O'Brien's prose is lathered with irony and a distinct sense of hopelessness pervades his eloquent narrative. Emotions are laid bare, and the psychological turmoil caused by the war itself are presented with veracity and aplomb. This is realism of the highest order. Simply brilliant
billy proctor
sunderland

Possibly one of the very best..., 25 Feb 2008
A truly, truly remarkable collection of short stories. I am not generally a short story reader, but the title so intrigued me I had to give it a go. I was stunned. I was left speechless. The prose is wonderful, and the sheer simplicity with which he brings about an understanding of what it was like to be an American teenager, and then suddenly, almost inexplicably, you are in the middle of Hell. I cannot say enough good things about this book. I truly, truly, truly loved it. Wonderful!

Truer as Fiction, 20 Jul 2007
Is it possible to be honest when the truth is unknown, and which truth anyway would we choose to tell if we knew it?
The Things They Carried is a book about the Viet Nam war, a war aided by GI Tim O'Brien. It is not a collection of short stories, it is not a novel. It is imagined truth trying to tell a story bigger than itself, and succeeding through the medium of fiction.
O'Brien writes with a simplicity that is profound. He is a magician pulling - not rabbits out of hats - but meaning from experience. After college he was summoned to fight a war in a foreign country. He didn't believe in the war and he didn't want to die and he struggled to decide on how to react to his draft papers.
He went to war.
Viet Nam becomes a kind of mist, partly collective, partly personal. O'Brien mixes fact with story telling to carve some kind of route through the mist. Places - Song Tra Bong, Quang Ngai, My Khe - become recurring characters, characters who seep into the landscape:

'He was under the mud and the water, folded in with the war, and their only thought was to find him and dig him out and then move on to some place dry and warm.'
(In the Field, p 163)

The reader joins O'Brien in his mist and the mist begins to make sense. It makes the sense of dimly remembered personal and collective truths. We go to war with the writer, recognising the humanity within through the horror without. We don't have to leave our armchairs to do this. It is, partly at least, the war of retaining a sense of honour in a world that mocks honour; a war with ourselves that can only be survived by the slow process of separating what is true from what is false. We are encouraged to observe the illusion of fact, to find the story. But to honour also our need to distance ourselves from human acts of inhumanity - our own and those of others.
On occasion O'Brien attributes acts of shame to others only to confess later it was his weakness that cost the life of a friend. He is honest enough to lie, sensitive enough to reflect and ultimately brave enough to share his darkness in public. Here, the process involved in being weak to be strong, in finding power through honesty, unfolds with grace - like the petals of some carnivorous plant.

'"Takes guts, I know that."
"It wasn't guts. I was scared."
Kiowa shrugged "Same difference."
(The Lives of the Dead, p 223)

It is tempting to seek to classify this book into some containable genre, something to make the journey feel safer. It is a war story; it is autobiography; it is fable or horror. It is all those things and therefore it is more. Quietly, The Things They Carried melds the concept of genre into insignificance. The book is a tour de force. Relax into it, read it as an epic poem - above all listen to it. This is a profound book telling the truth in the only way humans can understand truth - through fiction.

Funny as well as sad, 19 Apr 2007
Somewhere between a short story collection and a novel, somewhere between fiction and memories is Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, a wonderful book about a terrible war.

O'Brien takes us into the life and minds of soldiers in a fashion rarely witnessed in fiction. Most characters in the book come alive and some of them the reader gets to really feel bad for when things go wrong. It's also a book with a wonderfully funny, in a strange way, story like the Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, a great story on it's own. It is also placed in the right order of stories in the book to have maximum effect, both on it's own and in a way to make the other stories more effective. We also have notes that can shock the reader. "Speaking of Courage was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa." (Page 155)

An amazing book, 06 Jul 2005
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED is a powerful memoir in the form of a collection of short stories about the haunting life of Tim O'Brien and a company of soldiers in Vietnam.
The Things They Carried was a thought-provoking and inspirational book. This highly vivid description of the Vietnam War kept me reading through the night until the last page. I am not a big reader but once I picked up this book I was reading for hours! This book gives a taste of Vietnam for those who were not there. The interesting thing about this book is that it tells the true life of the soldiers giving us a better idea of what the soldiers went, and what war really is. One comes close to understanding how the feelings from going to war, leaving their families behind them, losing loved friends, killing another man, and how the pathetic nature of the foods and sleeping conditions; all traumas of war that can change a human being forever.

If you like war novels, then this is a must read. Even if you don't like war books and think they're all the same, read this and you will reconsider. One thing for sure is that you will appreciate the style of writing and the way it makes you think. You still get to laugh despite the deaths and destructions. The soldiers seem to taunt life with life and death games. Written with a deep message and in a manner similar to CHEKHOV AND TISI JANVIER, this anthology of related short stories about the Vietnam War portrays men who faced their fears, confronted danger, came out alive but became scarred for life.

BRUTAL HONESTY, 15 Jan 2002
The first thing that grabbed me about O'Brien's collection of short stories about the Vietnam war, was the stark realism. This is an exploration of the human condition rather than a war story per se. O'Brien's prose is lathered with irony and a distinct sense of hopelessness pervades his eloquent narrative. Emotions are laid bare, and the psychological turmoil caused by the war itself are presented with veracity and aplomb. This is realism of the highest order. Simply brilliant
billy proctor
sunderland

This novel should be thrown in the lake at the woods., 13 Nov 2007
This novel is as bloated as it is boring. 300 pages of conjecture and hypothesis and mind-numbing detail that add little by way of atmosphere and even less by way of a point. And there it is, what is the point to this novel? There is nothing better than a prosaic dimensionless character wandering around saying kill jesus and murdering pot plants with boiling water. Oh my.

Ambiguity as an art form, 02 Apr 2007
A wonderfully atmospheric, menacing psychological thriller that plays with your expectations of both content and format. Gripping, thought-provoking, horrific without ever being gratuitous or sensationalist, and genuinely scary.

Excellent -- well beyond a "thriller", 09 Feb 2004
O'Brien has the ability to put descriptions of emotions into a few exact words that most of us find diffcult to articulate at all. This novel is a superb examination of a failing relationship as well as being a tense and exciting story. The writing is superb;the construction of the plot is unusual and holds the attention. Don't think of this one as a bed-time read -- you might still be up at 4am,aching to finish it but not wanting it to end!

brilliantly constructed thrilling novel, 04 Apr 2001
Allthough it is years ago that I have read this fascinating novel about a politician, his wife, her disappearance and their lies of life, I still can smell the village, the lake and the wood. Particularely interesting in this novel is Tim O'Brian's construction of the novel and the three levels of footnotes he uses. They sometimes address the reader, explore and drive on the story or give detailed facts on a former lawsuit of his main character. Overall: A pleasant read, a thrilling novel and definitely a very good recommendation. One of my favourite books of the last years.

Possibly one of the very best..., 25 Feb 2008
A truly, truly remarkable collection of short stories. I am not generally a short story reader, but the title so intrigued me I had to give it a go. I was stunned. I was left speechless. The prose is wonderful, and the sheer simplicity with which he brings about an understanding of what it was like to be an American teenager, and then suddenly, almost inexplicably, you are in the middle of Hell. I cannot say enough good things about this book. I truly, truly, truly loved it. Wonderful!

Truer as Fiction, 20 Jul 2007
Is it possible to be honest when the truth is unknown, and which truth anyway would we choose to tell if we knew it?
The Things They Carried is a book about the Viet Nam war, a war aided by GI Tim O'Brien. It is not a collection of short stories, it is not a novel. It is imagined truth trying to tell a story bigger than itself, and succeeding through the medium of fiction.
O'Brien writes with a simplicity that is profound. He is a magician pulling - not rabbits out of hats - but meaning from experience. After college he was summoned to fight a war in a foreign country. He didn't believe in the war and he didn't want to die and he struggled to decide on how to react to his draft papers.
He went to war.
Viet Nam becomes a kind of mist, partly collective, partly personal. O'Brien mixes fact with story telling to carve some kind of route through the mist. Places - Song Tra Bong, Quang Ngai, My Khe - become recurring characters, characters who seep into the landscape:

'He was under the mud and the water, folded in with the war, and their only thought was to find him and dig him out and then move on to some place dry and warm.'
(In the Field, p 163)

The reader joins O'Brien in his mist and the mist begins to make sense. It makes the sense of dimly remembered personal and collective truths. We go to war with the writer, recognising the humanity within through the horror without. We don't have to leave our armchairs to do this. It is, partly at least, the war of retaining a sense of honour in a world that mocks honour; a war with ourselves that can only be survived by the slow process of separating what is true from what is false. We are encouraged to observe the illusion of fact, to find the story. But to honour also our need to distance ourselves from human acts of inhumanity - our own and those of others.
On occasion O'Brien attributes acts of shame to others only to confess later it was his weakness that cost the life of a friend. He is honest enough to lie, sensitive enough to reflect and ultimately brave enough to share his darkness in public. Here, the process involved in being weak to be strong, in finding power through honesty, unfolds with grace - like the petals of some carnivorous plant.

'"Takes guts, I know that."
"It wasn't guts. I was scared."
Kiowa shrugged "Same difference."
(The Lives of the Dead, p 223)

It is tempting to seek to classify this book into some containable genre, something to make the journey feel safer. It is a war story; it is autobiography; it is fable or horror. It is all those things and therefore it is more. Quietly, The Things They Carried melds the concept of genre into insignificance. The book is a tour de force. Relax into it, read it as an epic poem - above all listen to it. This is a profound book telling the truth in the only way humans can understand truth - through fiction.

Funny as well as sad, 19 Apr 2007
Somewhere between a short story collection and a novel, somewhere between fiction and memories is Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, a wonderful book about a terrible war.

O'Brien takes us into the life and minds of soldiers in a fashion rarely witnessed in fiction. Most characters in the book come alive and some of them the reader gets to really feel bad for when things go wrong. It's also a book with a wonderfully funny, in a strange way, story like the Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, a great story on it's own. It is also placed in the right order of stories in the book to have maximum effect, both on it's own and in a way to make the other stories more effective. We also have notes that can shock the reader. "Speaking of Courage was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa." (Page 155)

An amazing book, 06 Jul 2005
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED is a powerful memoir in the form of a collection of short stories about the haunting life of Tim O'Brien and a company of soldiers in Vietnam.
The Things They Carried was a thought-provoking and inspirational book. This highly vivid description of the Vietnam War kept me reading through the night until the last page. I am not a big reader but once I picked up this book I was reading for hours! This book gives a taste of Vietnam for those who were not there. The interesting thing about this book is that it tells the true life of the soldiers giving us a better idea of what the soldiers went, and what war really is. One comes close to understanding how the feelings from going to war, leaving their families behind them, losing loved friends, killing another man, and how the pathetic nature of the foods and sleeping conditions; all traumas of war that can change a human being forever.

If you like war novels, then this is a must read. Even if you don't like war books and think they're all the same, read this and you will reconsider. One thing for sure is that you will appreciate the style of writing and the way it makes you think. You still get to laugh despite the deaths and destructions. The soldiers seem to taunt life with life and death games. Written with a deep message and in a manner similar to CHEKHOV AND TISI JANVIER, this anthology of related short stories about the Vietnam War portrays men who faced their fears, confronted danger, came out alive but became scarred for life.

BRUTAL HONESTY, 15 Jan 2002
The first thing that grabbed me about O'Brien's collection of short stories about the Vietnam war, was the stark realism. This is an exploration of the human condition rather than a war story per se. O'Brien's prose is lathered with irony and a distinct sense of hopelessness pervades his eloquent narrative. Emotions are laid bare, and the psychological turmoil caused by the war itself are presented with veracity and aplomb. This is realism of the highest order. Simply brilliant
billy proctor
sunderland

This novel should be thrown in the lake at the woods., 13 Nov 2007
This novel is as bloated as it is boring. 300 pages of conjecture and hypothesis and mind-numbing detail that add little by way of atmosphere and even less by way of a point. And there it is, what is the point to this novel? There is nothing better than a prosaic dimensionless character wandering around saying kill jesus and murdering pot plants with boiling water. Oh my.

Ambiguity as an art form, 02 Apr 2007
A wonderfully atmospheric, menacing psychological thriller that plays with your expectations of both content and format. Gripping, thought-provoking, horrific without ever being gratuitous or sensationalist, and genuinely scary.

Excellent -- well beyond a "thriller", 09 Feb 2004
O'Brien has the ability to put descriptions of emotions into a few exact words that most of us find diffcult to articulate at all. This novel is a superb examination of a failing relationship as well as being a tense and exciting story. The writing is superb;the construction of the plot is unusual and holds the attention. Don't think of this one as a bed-time read -- you might still be up at 4am,aching to finish it but not wanting it to end!

brilliantly constructed thrilling novel, 04 Apr 2001
Allthough it is years ago that I have read this fascinating novel about a politician, his wife, her disappearance and their lies of life, I still can smell the village, the lake and the wood. Particularely interesting in this novel is Tim O'Brian's construction of the novel and the three levels of footnotes he uses. They sometimes address the reader, explore and drive on the story or give detailed facts on a former lawsuit of his main character. Overall: A pleasant read, a thrilling novel and definitely a very good recommendation. One of my favourite books of the last years.

Weird, in a good way..., 28 Mar 2006
I found this book slightly confusing, but I actually think that was O'Brien's intention. He cleverly blurs fantasy and reality, while at the same time conjuring up vivid and distrbing images of the Vietnam war. It is very well written throughout and O'Brien's style keeps you hooked.

I bought this book after reading "If I Die in a Combat Zone", and to be honest I didn't enjoy this book as much. It's still very good, don't get me wrong, but if you're going to read one book by Tim O'Brien then go for "If I Die".

Fantastic, 24 Jan 2003
I was enthralled by this book. It's confusing at first, mixing in different narrative streams, but as you realise what's happening the story's power grows.

O'Brien writes so well, and certain chapters stick in my memory as perfect stand-alone images of the war - soldiers arriving at a hot LZ, or trudging up a hill trail in the jungle. It's a book I will certainly re-read one day, and I'd recommend it - an ingenious blend of gritty realism and fantasy.

paris before breakfast, 23 Jun 2002
Tim O'Brien's book made me smile, laugh and cry. The beauty of the book is in the possibility that imagination can be the reserve of young men dealing with being thrust into horrific situations. Cacciato's moon like face should draw us all on to imagine what lies underneath the hole.

A good, not great, read, 22 Mar 2000
Overall, this was a pretty good book but it retrospect it came across more as a warm-up for The Things They Carried (an excellent, five-star book.) O'Brien plays around a little with magic realism here but if you're read anything about the Vietnam War, a lot of this book will be real familiar.

Possibly one of the very best..., 25 Feb 2008
A truly, truly remarkable collection of short stories. I am not generally a short story reader, but the title so intrigued me I had to give it a go. I was stunned. I was left speechless. The prose is wonderful, and the sheer simplicity with which he brings about an understanding of what it was like to be an American teenager, and then suddenly, almost inexplicably, you are in the middle of Hell. I cannot say enough good things about this book. I truly, truly, truly loved it. Wonderful!

Truer as Fiction, 20 Jul 2007
Is it possible to be honest when the truth is unknown, and which truth anyway would we choose to tell if we knew it?
The Things They Carried is a book about the Viet Nam war, a war aided by GI Tim O'Brien. It is not a collection of short stories, it is not a novel. It is imagined truth trying to tell a story bigger than itself, and succeeding through the medium of fiction.
O'Brien writes with a simplicity that is profound. He is a magician pulling - not rabbits out of hats - but meaning from experience. After college he was summoned to fight a war in a foreign country. He didn't believe in the war and he didn't want to die and he struggled to decide on how to react to his draft papers.
He went to war.
Viet Nam becomes a kind of mist, partly collective, partly personal. O'Brien mixes fact with story telling to carve some kind of route through the mist. Places - Song Tra Bong, Quang Ngai, My Khe - become recurring characters, characters who seep into the landscape:

'He was under the mud and the water, folded in with the war, and their only thought was to find him and dig him out and then move on to some place dry and warm.'
(In the Field, p 163)

The reader joins O'Brien in his mist and the mist begins to make sense. It makes the sense of dimly remembered personal and collective truths. We go to war with the writer, recognising the humanity within through the horror without. We don't have to leave our armchairs to do this. It is, partly at least, the war of retaining a sense of honour in a world that mocks honour; a war with ourselves that can only be survived by the slow process of separating what is true from what is false. We are encouraged to observe the illusion of fact, to find the story. But to honour also our need to distance ourselves from human acts of inhumanity - our own and those of others.
On occasion O'Brien attributes acts of shame to others only to confess later it was his weakness that cost the life of a friend. He is honest enough to lie, sensitive enough to reflect and ultimately brave enough to share his darkness in public. Here, the process involved in being weak to be strong, in finding power through honesty, unfolds with grace - like the petals of some carnivorous plant.

'"Takes guts, I know that."
"It wasn't guts. I was scared."
Kiowa shrugged "Same difference."
(The Lives of the Dead, p 223)

It is tempting to seek to classify this book into some containable genre, something to make the journey feel safer. It is a war story; it is autobiography; it is fable or horror. It is all those things and therefore it is more. Quietly, The Things They Carried melds the concept of genre into insignificance. The book is a tour de force. Relax into it, read it as an epic poem - above all listen to it. This is a profound book telling the truth in the only way humans can understand truth - through fiction.

Funny as well as sad, 19 Apr 2007
Somewhere between a short story collection and a novel, somewhere between fiction and memories is Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, a wonderful book about a terrible war.

O'Brien takes us into the life and minds of soldiers in a fashion rarely witnessed in fiction. Most characters in the book come alive and some of them the reader gets to really feel bad for when things go wrong. It's also a book with a wonderfully funny, in a strange way, story like the Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, a great story on it's own. It is also placed in the right order of stories in the book to have maximum effect, both on it's own and in a way to make the other stories more effective. We also have notes that can shock the reader. "Speaking of Courage was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa." (Page 155)

An amazing book, 06 Jul 2005
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED is a powerful memoir in the form of a collection of short stories about the haunting life of Tim O'Brien and a company of soldiers in Vietnam.
The Things They Carried was a thought-provoking and inspirational book. This highly vivid description of the Vietnam War kept me reading through the night until the last page. I am not a big reader but once I picked up this book I was reading for hours! This book gives a taste of Vietnam for those who were not there. The interesting thing about this book is that it tells the true life of the soldiers giving us a better idea of what the soldiers went, and what war really is. One comes close to understanding how the feelings from going to war, leaving their families behind them, losing loved friends, killing another man, and how the pathetic nature of the foods and sleeping conditions; all traumas of war that can change a human being forever.

If you like war novels, then this is a must read. Even if you don't like war books and think they're all the same, read this and you will reconsider. One thing for sure is that you will appreciate the style of writing and the way it makes you think. You still get to laugh despite the deaths and destructions. The soldiers seem to taunt life with life and death games. Written with a deep message and in a manner similar to CHEKHOV AND TISI JANVIER, this anthology of related short stories about the Vietnam War portrays men who faced their fears, confronted danger, came out alive but became scarred for life.

BRUTAL HONESTY, 15 Jan 2002
The first thing that grabbed me about O'Brien's collection of short stories about the Vietnam war, was the stark realism. This is an exploration of the human condition rather than a war story per se. O'Brien's prose is lathered with irony and a distinct sense of hopelessness pervades his eloquent narrative. Emotions are laid bare, and the psychological turmoil caused by the war itself are presented with veracity and aplomb. This is realism of the highest order. Simply brilliant
billy proctor
sunderland

This novel should be thrown in the lake at the woods., 13 Nov 2007
This novel is as bloated as it is boring. 300 pages of conjecture and hypothesis and mind-numbing detail that add little by way of atmosphere and even less by way of a point. And there it is, what is the point to this novel? There is nothing better than a prosaic dimensionless character wandering around saying kill jesus and murdering pot plants with boiling water. Oh my.

Ambiguity as an art form, 02 Apr 2007
A wonderfully atmospheric, menacing psychological thriller that plays with your expectations of both content and format. Gripping, thought-provoking, horrific without ever being gratuitous or sensationalist, and genuinely scary.

Excellent -- well beyond a "thriller", 09 Feb 2004
O'Brien has the ability to put descriptions of emotions into a few exact words that most of us find diffcult to articulate at all. This novel is a superb examination of a failing relationship as well as being a tense and exciting story. The writing is superb;the construction of the plot is unusual and holds the attention. Don't think of this one as a bed-time read -- you might still be up at 4am,aching to finish it but not wanting it to end!

brilliantly constructed thrilling novel, 04 Apr 2001
Allthough it is years ago that I have read this fascinating novel about a politician, his wife, her disappearance and their lies of life, I still can smell the village, the lake and the wood. Particularely interesting in this novel is Tim O'Brian's construction of the novel and the three levels of footnotes he uses. They sometimes address the reader, explore and drive on the story or give detailed facts on a former lawsuit of his main character. Overall: A pleasant read, a thrilling novel and definitely a very good recommendation. One of my favourite books of the last years.

Weird, in a good way..., 28 Mar 2006
I found this book slightly confusing, but I actually think that was O'Brien's intention. He cleverly blurs fantasy and reality, while at the same time conjuring up vivid and distrbing images of the Vietnam war. It is very well written throughout and O'Brien's style keeps you hooked.

I bought this book after reading "If I Die in a Combat Zone", and to be honest I didn't enjoy this book as much. It's still very good, don't get me wrong, but if you're going to read one book by Tim O'Brien then go for "If I Die".

Fantastic, 24 Jan 2003
I was enthralled by this book. It's confusing at first, mixing in different narrative streams, but as you realise what's happening the story's power grows.

O'Brien writes so well, and certain chapters stick in my memory as perfect stand-alone images of the war - soldiers arriving at a hot LZ, or trudging up a hill trail in the jungle. It's a book I will certainly re-read one day, and I'd recommend it - an ingenious blend of gritty realism and fantasy.

paris before breakfast, 23 Jun 2002
Tim O'Brien's book made me smile, laugh and cry. The beauty of the book is in the possibility that imagination can be the reserve of young men dealing with being thrust into horrific situations. Cacciato's moon like face should draw us all on to imagine what lies underneath the hole.

A good, not great, read, 22 Mar 2000
Overall, this was a pretty good book but it retrospect it came across more as a warm-up for The Things They Carried (an excellent, five-star book.) O'Brien plays around a little with magic realism here but if you're read anything about the Vietnam War, a lot of this book will be real familiar.

Rivetting, 29 Nov 2007
This is not a book that glorifies war. It does on the other hand engage fully with the experience what it is to live through combat. O'Brien tells the story of his tour of duty in Vietnam, warts and all. He is clearly an intelligent man, haunted by his experiences, enough so to write a book about them, although not necessarily tortured by them. He is articulate, thoughtful and matter of fact in the way he tells his story. It is full of the ups and downs of a soldier's life, the boredom, the thrills, the day to day drill and the trauma of battle. A fascinating book.

An OK account of the Vietnam experience - but it fails to convince, 23 Oct 2006
"Nobody has written about the Vietnam War with more eloquence than Tim O'Brien." So says the quote from the Washington Star on the book's cover, going on to add, "[this] may be the greatest piece of work to come out of Vietnam." I don't know when that review was penned but I suspect it was pretty soon after the book was first published in 1973. I say that because there are now no shortage of works of both fiction and non-fiction (and some in between - 13th Valley) which write at least as eloquently about Vietnam and, in my opinion, are greater pieces of work on the subject.

O'Brien objected to the war in Vietnam, even going as far as to map out detailed plans for an escape to a neutral country during his first leave from basic training. He says, in the brief interview transcribed at the back of the book, that 'If I Die...' is about, "...the daily brutalities...that were the consequences of abstract political ideas gone haywire." The book then is supposed to be an exploration of the rightness of the US's involvement in the Vietnam war in particular, and the rightness of any nation builders' involvement in any military capacity in general. O'Brien is obviously of the opinion that it is inherently wrong and flawed, and seems to think that just laying his day to day experiences of being a footsoldier on a tour in Vietnam before us is all the evidence he needs to convince the reader.

Personally I am more of the opinion that the 'daily brutalities' he describes in the book are more compelling evidence of the general poor quality and malaise that was endemic amongst the young generation of draftees during Vietnam than it was evidence of any nation's policies. An old-school WWII veteran, Major Callicles, who takes over O'Brien's company towards the end of his tour makes just such a point. O'Brien's army unit were deployed into the My Lai area of operations - just a year after the infamous Pinkville massacre. Callicles was irked by the laziness, pot smoking, whoring, long hair, racial divisions and basic absence of professionalism he saw around him, claiming disaffected and unprofessional soldiering was to more blame for My Lai: Pinkville wouldn't have happened in WWII.

Now I don't know if that's true; I wouldn't be surprised if similar US atrocities can be highlighted in WWII or Korea or elsewhere. But I'm afraid Tim O'Brien's account graphically confirms what a shambles the troops and their officers were at that time, and it's difficult not to suspect that much of the behaviour that O'Brien is describing is due to dreadful soldiering rather than misguided policy as he tries to show. O'Brien's unit were hopeless - preferring to radio in phantom sit-reps and even artillery missions from the security of their base than to go out patrolling aggressively. Even when they did patrol, they ignored noise and light discipline, dumped essential kit they couldn't be bothered to carry, didn't bother with listening posts, routinely fell asleep on watch and prefered to use human shields for insurance against night infiltration than to set up proper defensive positions. When going out on patrol the last thing they wanted to do was make contact with VC, preferring instead to use grenades or, better and more indiscriminate still, napalm than to risk prying too closely into suspect villages and trails. The result was that, in concentrating on self defense and preservation above all else, they shambled grudgingly around their AO just getting picked off by booby traps and snipers and, paradoxically, had an appalling casualty rate as a result.

The overwhelming impression I got from the book - which is an OK, if brief read - is not what horrible folly war is as O'Brien intended. Of course war is a catastrophic folly, but 'If I Die in a Combat Zone' was not proof of that (Phil Caputo's 'A Rumor of War' achieves that much more stylishly and convincingly). The overwhelming impression I got from the book was just how hopeless, moribund and wracked with self-fulfilling fear of the enemy (and we're talking a plain unwillingness to fight rather than any widely held political or moral objections) a certain section of the 1960s American draft generation were.

Superb!, 25 Jan 2006
We all think we know about the Vietnam war. The brutality, the slaughter, the insanity - a very general view. This book takes the reader right into the thick of it. You're not viewing the war on the General's map, you're right there in the fox hole with your buddies. This is the tale of a normal man living through the war. It's not a political text. There's no "slant" put on the events. It's just a straight forward personal story. Like sitting down and listening to a veteran talk - that's O'Brien's style and it is captivating.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. Whether you have an interest in the Vietnam war or not, you won't want to put it down.

Madness, Insanity & Banality in the field, 26 May 2004
Interesting recollections of a year in Vietnam some 35 years ago. The emphasis is very much upon how many different weapons can kill you in how many different ways; but given the situation, what else is there to concern yourself with but survival?

A fine "On the Ground View", 30 May 2001
This is not a history book, tactics and plans are not discussed. This is a book of survival, survival of a naïve individual who quickly gets the fastest lesson in maturity required - infantry soldier war. O'Brien's book is riveting reading, it is basic and direct, it quickly knocks any glory to be had in being in Vietnam. This is a book of survival, one were friendships can end quickly. O'Brien does not ask for sympathy he only appears to want the reader to try and understand what it is was like for the common GI.

Possibly one of the very best..., 25 Feb 2008
A truly, truly remarkable collection of short stories. I am not generally a short story reader, but the title so intrigued me I had to give it a go. I was stunned. I was left speechless. The prose is wonderful, and the sheer simplicity with which he brings about an understanding of what it was like to be an American teenager, and then suddenly, almost inexplicably, you are in the middle of Hell. I cannot say enough good things about this book. I truly, truly, truly loved it. Wonderful!

Truer as Fiction, 20 Jul 2007
Is it possible to be honest when the truth is unknown, and which truth anyway would we choose to tell if we knew it?
The Things They Carried is a book about the Viet Nam war, a war aided by GI Tim O'Brien. It is not a collection of short stories, it is not a novel. It is imagined truth trying to tell a story bigger than itself, and succeeding through the medium of fiction.
O'Brien writes with a simplicity that is profound. He is a magician pulling - not rabbits out of hats - but meaning from experience. After college he was summoned to fight a war in a foreign country. He didn't believe in the war and he didn't want to die and he struggled to decide on how to react to his draft papers.
He went to war.
Viet Nam becomes a kind of mist, partly collective, partly personal. O'Brien mixes fact with story telling to carve some kind of route through the mist. Places - Song Tra Bong, Quang Ngai, My Khe - become recurring characters, characters who seep into the landscape:

'He was under the mud and the water, folded in with the war, and their only thought was to find him and dig him out and then move on to some place dry and warm.'
(In the Field, p 163)

The reader joins O'Brien in his mist and the mist begins to make sense. It makes the sense of dimly remembered personal and collective truths. We go to war with the writer, recognising the humanity within through the horror without. We don't have to leave our armchairs to do this. It is, partly at least, the war of retaining a sense of honour in a world that mocks honour; a war with ourselves that can only be survived by the slow process of separating what is true from what is false. We are encouraged to observe the illusion of fact, to find the story. But to honour also our need to distance ourselves from human acts of inhumanity - our own and those of others.
On occasion O'Brien attributes acts of shame to others only to confess later it was his weakness that cost the life of a friend. He is honest enough to lie, sensitive enough to reflect and ultimately brave enough to share his darkness in public. Here, the process involved in being weak to be strong, in finding power through honesty, unfolds with grace - like the petals of some carnivorous plant.

'"Takes guts, I know that."
"It wasn't guts. I was scared."
Kiowa shrugged "Same difference."
(The Lives of the Dead, p 223)

It is tempting to seek to classify this book into some containable genre, something to make the journey feel safer. It is a war story; it is autobiography; it is fable or horror. It is all those things and therefore it is more. Quietly, The Things They Carried melds the concept of genre into insignificance. The book is a tour de force. Relax into it, read it as an epic poem - above all listen to it. This is a profound book telling the truth in the only way humans can understand truth - through fiction.

Funny as well as sad, 19 Apr 2007
Somewhere between a short story collection and a novel, somewhere between fiction and memories is Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, a wonderful book about a terrible war.

O'Brien takes us into the life and minds of soldiers in a fashion rarely witnessed in fiction. Most characters in the book come alive and some of them the reader gets to really feel bad for when things go wrong. It's also a book with a wonderfully funny, in a strange way, story like the Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, a great story on it's own. It is also placed in the right order of stories in the book to have maximum effect, both on it's own and in a way to make the other stories more effective. We also have notes that can shock the reader. "Speaking of Courage was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa." (Page 155)

An amazing book, 06 Jul 2005
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED is a powerful memoir in the form of a collection of short stories about the haunting life of Tim O'Brien and a company of soldiers in Vietnam.
The Things They Carried was a thought-provoking and inspirational book. This highly vivid description of the Vietnam War kept me reading through the night until the last page. I am not a big reader but once I picked up this book I was reading for hours! This book gives a taste of Vietnam for those who were not there. The interesting thing about this book is that it tells the true life of the soldiers giving us a better idea of what the soldiers went, and what war really is. One comes close to understanding how the feelings from going to war, leaving their families behind them, losing loved friends, killing another man, and how the pathetic nature of the foods and sleeping conditions; all traumas of war that can change a human being forever.

If you like war novels, then this is a must read. Even if you don't like war books and think they're all the same, read this and you will reconsider. One thing for sure is that you will appreciate the style of writing and the way it makes you think. You still get to laugh despite the deaths and destructions. The soldiers seem to taunt life with life and death games. Written with a deep message and in a manner similar to CHEKHOV AND TISI JANVIER, this anthology of related short stories about the Vietnam War portrays men who faced their fears, confronted danger, came out alive but became scarred for life.

BRUTAL HONESTY, 15 Jan 2002
The first thing that grabbed me about O'Brien's collection of short stories about the Vietnam war, was the stark realism. This is an exploration of the human condition rather than a war story per se. O'Brien's prose is lathered with irony and a distinct sense of hopelessness pervades his eloquent narrative. Emotions are laid bare, and the psychological turmoil caused by the war itself are presented with veracity and aplomb. This is realism of the highest order. Simply brilliant
billy proctor
sunderland

This novel should be thrown in the lake at the woods., 13 Nov 2007
This novel is as bloated as it is boring. 300 pages of conjecture and hypothesis and mind-numbing detail that add little by way of atmosphere and even less by way of a point. And there it is, what is the point to this novel? There is nothing better than a prosaic dimensionless character wandering around saying kill jesus and murdering pot plants with boiling water. Oh my.

Ambiguity as an art form, 02 Apr 2007
A wonderfully atmospheric, menacing psychological thriller that plays with your expectations of both content and format. Gripping, thought-provoking, horrific without ever being gratuitous or sensationalist, and genuinely scary.

Excellent -- well beyond a "thriller", 09 Feb 2004
O'Brien has the ability to put descriptions of emotions into a few exact words that most of us find diffcult to articulate at all. This novel is a superb examination of a failing relationship as well as being a tense and exciting story. The writing is superb;the construction of the plot is unusual and holds the attention. Don't think of this one as a bed-time read -- you might still be up at 4am,aching to finish it but not wanting it to end!

brilliantly constructed thrilling novel, 04 Apr 2001
Allthough it is years ago that I have read this fascinating novel about a politician, his wife, her disappearance and their lies of life, I still can smell the village, the lake and the wood. Particularely interesting in this novel is Tim O'Brian's construction of the novel and the three levels of footnotes he uses. They sometimes address the reader, explore and drive on the story or give detailed facts on a former lawsuit of his main character. Overall: A pleasant read, a thrilling novel and definitely a very good recommendation. One of my favourite books of the last years.

Weird, in a good way..., 28 Mar 2006
I found this book slightly confusing, but I actually think that was O'Brien's intention. He cleverly blurs fantasy and reality, while at the same time conjuring up vivid and distrbing images of the Vietnam war. It is very well written throughout and O'Brien's style keeps you hooked.

I bought this book after reading "If I Die in a Combat Zone", and to be honest I didn't enjoy this book as much. It's still very good, don't get me wrong, but if you're going to read one book by Tim O'Brien then go for "If I Die".

Fantastic, 24 Jan 2003
I was enthralled by this book. It's confusing at first, mixing in different narrative streams, but as you realise what's happening the story's power grows.

O'Brien writes so well, and certain chapters stick in my memory as perfect stand-alone images of the war - soldiers arriving at a hot LZ, or trudging up a hill trail in the jungle. It's a book I will certainly re-read one day, and I'd recommend it - an ingenious blend of gritty realism and fantasy.

paris before breakfast, 23 Jun 2002
Tim O'Brien's book made me smile, laugh and cry. The beauty of the book is in the possibility that imagination can be the reserve of young men dealing with being thrust into horrific situations. Cacciato's moon like face should draw us all on to imagine what lies underneath the hole.

A good, not great, read, 22 Mar 2000
Overall, this was a pretty good book but it retrospect it came across more as a warm-up for The Things They Carried (an excellent, five-star book.) O'Brien plays around a little with magic realism here but if you're read anything about the Vietnam War, a lot of this book will be real familiar.

Rivetting, 29 Nov 2007
This is not a book that glorifies war. It does on the other hand engage fully with the experience what it is to live through combat. O'Brien tells the story of his tour of duty in Vietnam, warts and all. He is clearly an intelligent man, haunted by his experiences, enough so to write a book about them, although not necessarily tortured by them. He is articulate, thoughtful and matter of fact in the way he tells his story. It is full of the ups and downs of a soldier's life, the boredom, the thrills, the day to day drill and the trauma of battle. A fascinating book.

An OK account of the Vietnam experience - but it fails to convince, 23 Oct 2006
"Nobody has written about the Vietnam War with more eloquence than Tim O'Brien." So says the quote from the Washington Star on the book's cover, going on to add, "[this] may be the greatest piece of work to come out of Vietnam." I don't know when that review was penned but I suspect it was pretty soon after the book was first published in 1973. I say that because there are now no shortage of works of both fiction and non-fiction (and some in between - 13th Valley) which write at least as eloquently about Vietnam and, in my opinion, are greater pieces of work on the subject.

O'Brien objected to the war in Vietnam, even going as far as to map out detailed plans for an escape to a neutral country during his first leave from basic training. He says, in the brief interview transcribed at the back of the book, that 'If I Die...' is about, "...the daily brutalities...that were the consequences of abstract political ideas gone haywire." The book then is supposed to be an exploration of the rightness of the US's involvement in the Vietnam war in particular, and the rightness of any nation builders' involvement in any military capacity in general. O'Brien is obviously of the opinion that it is inherently wrong and flawed, and seems to think that just laying his day to day experiences of being a footsoldier on a tour in Vietnam before us is all the evidence he needs to convince the reader.

Personally I am more of the opinion that the 'daily brutalities' he describes in the book are more compelling evidence of the general poor quality and malaise that was endemic amongst the young generation of draftees during Vietnam than it was evidence of any nation's policies. An old-school WWII veteran, Major Callicles, who takes over O'Brien's company towards the end of his tour makes just such a point. O'Brien's army unit were deployed into the My Lai area of operations - just a year after the infamous Pinkville massacre. Callicles was irked by the laziness, pot smoking, whoring, long hair, racial divisions and basic absence of professionalism he saw around him, claiming disaffected and unprofessional soldiering was to more blame for My Lai: Pinkville wouldn't have happened in WWII.

Now I don't know if that's true; I wouldn't be surprised if similar US atrocities can be highlighted in WWII or Korea or elsewhere. But I'm afraid Tim O'Brien's account graphically confirms what a shambles the troops and their officers were at that time, and it's difficult not to suspect that much of the behaviour that O'Brien is describing is due to dreadful soldiering rather than misguided policy as he tries to show. O'Brien's unit were hopeless - preferring to radio in phantom sit-reps and even artillery missions from the security of their base than to go out patrolling aggressively. Even when they did patrol, they ignored noise and light discipline, dumped essential kit they couldn't be bothered to carry, didn't bother with listening posts, routinely fell asleep on watch and prefered to use human shields for insurance against night infiltration than to set up proper defensive positions. When going out on patrol the last thing they wanted to do was make contact with VC, preferring instead to use grenades or, better and more indiscriminate still, napalm than to risk prying too closely into suspect villages and trails. The result was that, in concentrating on self defense and preservation above all else, they shambled grudgingly around their AO just getting picked off by booby traps and snipers and, paradoxically, had an appalling casualty rate as a result.

The overwhelming impression I got from the book - which is an OK, if brief read - is not what horrible folly war is as O'Brien intended. Of course war is a catastrophic folly, but 'If I Die in a Combat Zone' was not proof of that (Phil Caputo's 'A Rumor of War' achieves that much more stylishly and convincingly). The overwhelming impression I got from the book was just how hopeless, moribund and wracked with self-fulfilling fear of the enemy (and we're talking a plain unwillingness to fight rather than any widely held political or moral objections) a certain section of the 1960s American draft generation were.

Superb!, 25 Jan 2006
We all think we know about the Vietnam war. The brutality, the slaughter, the insanity - a very general view. This book takes the reader right into the thick of it. You're not viewing the war on the General's map, you're right there in the fox hole with your buddies. This is the tale of a normal man living through the war. It's not a political text. There's no "slant" put on the events. It's just a straight forward personal story. Like sitting down and listening to a veteran talk - that's O'Brien's style and it is captivating.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. Whether you have an interest in the Vietnam war or not, you won't want to put it down.

Madness, Insanity & Banality in the field, 26 May 2004
Interesting recollections of a year in Vietnam some 35 years ago. The emphasis is very much upon how many different weapons can kill you in how many different ways; but given the situation, what else is there to concern yourself with but survival?

A fine "On the Ground View", 30 May 2001
This is not a history book, tactics and plans are not discussed. This is a book of survival, survival of a naïve individual who quickly gets the fastest lesson in maturity required - infantry soldier war. O'Brien's book is riveting reading, it is basic and direct, it quickly knocks any glory to be had in being in Vietnam. This is a book of survival, one were friendships can end quickly. O'Brien does not ask for sympathy he only appears to want the reader to try and understand what it is was like for the common GI.

Can do better!, 30 May 2008
If, like myself you have arrived at this novel after reading O'Brien's other literary offerings: 'The Things they Carried' - Excellent, 'If I Should Die in a Combat Zone' - Pretty Good, and 'Going After Cacciato' - Utterly Brilliant. Then like myself, you will probably be disappointed if you spend your valuable time and lay down you hard-earned, for this VERY mediocre novel. Clearly at the early stage of his career when this was written O'Brien did not possess any great gift for entirely fictitious story-telling, and certainly not outside of his Vietnam 'comfort-zone'.

Billed as somewhere between an epic suspense and a personal growth tale built on many subtle layers, it really is anything but. What it is, is a very average, bland story of no particular suspense, nor growth, evolution nor metamorphosis. All built around a very tenuous cross-country skiing experience that never really delivers any thrills or nail-biting. O'Brien spins his uniform, colourless yarn at an average pace and it's more like a train journey rather than a roller-coaster ride. Not much tensions and not much detail. No neatly drawn characters of carefully painted faces.

O'Brien's ultimate downfall lies in the previous point, in the fact he cannot paint pictures in the reader's mind. The old debate of the written versus the pictorial; the book verses the film is a mute point here. The writer should be at least capable (willing) to deliver enough adjectives and adverbs so as to allow us to use that as glue to add to the nouns and verbs and build our own visual puzzle, but sadly, in this case he clearly does not. His painting is altogether too wishy-washy, too much like some abstract water-colour that leaves the reader squinting trying to match the title to the visual imagery.

Compare this kind of writing to some masters of descriptive writing; Salinger, Hesse, Orwell, or contemporaries like Easton Ellis or Murakami Haruki and you realise that O'Brien is way out of his league in tackling this kind novel. Likewise his publishers were foolish to ever allow this to reach the printing press. One cannot help correlating this to one of those albums greedy record companies put out; albums full of out-takes, b-sides and half ideas better left on the studio floor.

Ultimately this book is bland and fruitless, uninteresting and unchallenging. It neither gives nor takes anything from the reader and offers not the slightest revelation nor ponderous moment, it is pulp-fiction at its worse, and in my mind that is a waste of time and trees. My advice, check out his other three offerings mentioned above, and you won't be disappointed - leave this one to be consigned to the bargain bins and the library shelves.

Moody and gripping...an adventure becomes a misadventure., 10 Oct 2003
I'm a fan of Tim O'Briens yet this novel disturbed me as much as any of his Vietnam books - wish i knew why! O'Brien swaps Vietnam for the American backwoods. At the heart of the book is the relationship between two very different brothers. The troubled, analytical Perry and the volatile returning war vet Harvey. O'Brien ensures this is no happy family reunion by throwing into the mix out of the ordinary set pieces and characters. Even the two women Grace and Addie are far from straight forward. Each of the four main characters are enigmatic and deep and made me want to know more about who they really were and how they had got there. Set in the wilderness, life is quiet and slow until the ordinary suddenly appears extraordinary and you don't realise the steady pace has quickened till you are running fast with it. Ghosts from the past are less frightening than the realities of the present and the conflicts between the leads. When Perry and Harvey set off on a skiing trip through the remote woodlands the suspense mounts and the challenge becomes more than just one between two rival brothers. The atmosphere and expectancy leaps from the pages and pulls you with it right to the unforgettable ending. A tense, well crafted read about self discovery and strained relationships that left a strange taste in my mind.

Haunting and compelling, an adventure that stays with you., 12 Jan 2001
What an interesting book. The central character is the complex Perry and the book is based on his relationship with his brother Harvey, Harvey's girlfriend Addie and Perry's wife, the long suffering Grace. On the surface, the book is about survival in the snow covered woods of Minnesota, however, the dynamics between the brothers is what this book is really all about. The author keeps the reader wanting to know more about Grace and Addie and keeps the brothers at the fore. This is one of those books that is like a good wine - it is enjoyable at the time and yet it is only now that I have finished that I realise how good it was. I am actually missing the experience of reading this book and I would love to read a sequel. Unfortunately there will not be one.

Possibly one of the very best..., 25 Feb 2008
A truly, truly remarkable collection of short stories. I am not generally a short story reader, but the title so intrigued me I had to give it a go. I was stunned. I was left speechless. The prose is wonderful, and the sheer simplicity with which he brings about an understanding of what it was like to be an American teenager, and then suddenly, almost inexplicably, you are in the middle of Hell. I cannot say enough good things about this book. I truly, truly, truly loved it. Wonderful!

Truer as Fiction, 20 Jul 2007
Is it possible to be honest when the truth is unknown, and which truth anyway would we choose to tell if we knew it?
The Things They Carried is a book about the Viet Nam war, a war aided by GI Tim O'Brien. It is not a collection of short stories, it is not a novel. It is imagined truth trying to tell a story bigger than itself, and succeeding through the medium of fiction.
O'Brien writes with a simplicity that is profound. He is a magician pulling - not rabbits out of hats - but meaning from experience. After college he was summoned to fight a war in a foreign country. He didn't believe in the war and he didn't want to die and he struggled to decide on how to react to his draft papers.
He went to war.
Viet Nam becomes a kind of mist, partly collective, partly personal. O'Brien mixes fact with story telling to carve some kind of route through the mist. Places - Song Tra Bong, Quang Ngai, My Khe - become recurring characters, characters who seep into the landscape:

'He was under the mud and the water, folded in with the war, and their only thought was to find him and dig him out and then move on to some place dry and warm.'
(In the Field, p 163)

The reader joins O'Brien in his mist and the mist begins to make sense. It makes the sense of dimly remembered personal and collective truths. We go to war with the writer, recognising the humanity within through the horror without. We don't have to leave our armchairs to do this. It is, partly at least, the war of retaining a sense of honour in a world that mocks honour; a war with ourselves that can only be survived by the slow process of separating what is true from what is false. We are encouraged to observe the illusion of fact, to find the story. But to honour also our need to distance ourselves from human acts of inhumanity - our own and those of others.
On occasion O'Brien attributes acts of shame to others only to confess later it was his weakness that cost the life of a friend. He is honest enough to lie, sensitive enough to reflect and ultimately brave enough to share his darkness in public. Here, the process involved in being weak to be strong, in finding power through honesty, unfolds with grace - like the petals of some carnivorous plant.

'"Takes guts, I know that."
"It wasn't guts. I was scared."
Kiowa shrugged "Same difference."
(The Lives of the Dead, p 223)

It is tempting to seek to classify this book into some containable genre, something to make the journey feel safer. It is a war story; it is autobiography; it is fable or horror. It is all those things and therefore it is more. Quietly, The Things They Carried melds the concept of genre into insignificance. The book is a tour de force. Relax into it, read it as an epic poem - above all listen to it. This is a profound book telling the truth in the only way humans can understand truth - through fiction.

Funny as well as sad, 19 Apr 2007
Somewhere between a short story collection and a novel, somewhere between fiction and memories is Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, a wonderful book about a terrible war.

O'Brien takes us into the life and minds of soldiers in a fashion rarely witnessed in fiction. Most characters in the book come alive and some of them the reader gets to really feel bad for when things go wrong. It's also a book with a wonderfully funny, in a strange way, story like the Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, a great story on it's own. It is also placed in the right order of stories in the book to have maximum effect, both on it's own and in a way to make the other stories more effective. We also have notes that can shock the reader. "Speaking of Courage was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa." (Page 155)

An amazing book, 06 Jul 2005
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED is a powerful memoir in the form of a collection of short stories about the haunting life of Tim O'Brien and a company of soldiers in Vietnam.
The Things They Carried was a thought-provoking and inspirational book. This highly vivid description of the Vietnam War kept me reading through the night until the last page. I am not a big reader but once I picked up this book I was reading for hours! This book gives a taste of Vietnam for those who were not there. The interesting thing about this book is that it tells the true life of the soldiers giving us a better idea of what the soldiers went, and what war really is. One comes close to understanding how the feelings from going to war, leaving their families behind them, losing loved friends, killing another man, and how the pathetic nature of the foods and sleeping conditions; all traumas of war that can change a human being forever.

If you like war novels, then this is a must read. Even if you don't like war books and think they're all the same, read this and you will reconsider. One thing for sure is that you will appreciate the style of writing and the way it makes you think. You still get to laugh despite the deaths and destructions. The soldiers seem to taunt life with life and death games. Written with a deep message and in a manner similar to CHEKHOV AND TISI JANVIER, this anthology of related short stories about the Vietnam War portrays men who faced their fears, confronted danger, came out alive but became scarred for life.

BRUTAL HONESTY, 15 Jan 2002
The first thing that grabbed me about O'Brien's collection of short stories about the Vietnam war, was the stark realism. This is an exploration of the human condition rather than a war story per se. O'Brien's prose is lathered with irony and a distinct sense of hopelessness pervades his eloquent narrative. Emotions are laid bare, and the psychological turmoil caused by the war itself are presented with veracity and aplomb. This is realism of the highest order. Simply brilliant
billy proctor
sunderland

This novel should be thrown in the lake at the woods., 13 Nov 2007
This novel is as bloated as it is boring. 300 pages of conjecture and hypothesis and mind-numbing detail that add little by way of atmosphere and even less by way of a point. And there it is, what is the point to this novel? There is nothing better than a prosaic dimensionless character wandering around saying kill jesus and murdering pot plants with boiling water. Oh my.

Ambiguity as an art form, 02 Apr 2007
A wonderfully atmospheric, menacing psychological thriller that plays with your expectations of both content and format. Gripping, thought-provoking, horrific without ever being gratuitous or sensationalist, and genuinely scary.

Excellent -- well beyond a "thriller", 09 Feb 2004
O'Brien has the ability to put descriptions of emotions into a few exact words that most of us find diffcult to articulate at all. This novel is a superb examination of a failing relationship as well as being a tense and exciting story. The writing is superb;the construction of the plot is unusual and holds the attention. Don't think of this one as a bed-time read -- you might still be up at 4am,aching to finish it but not wanting it to end!

brilliantly constructed thrilling novel, 04 Apr 2001
Allthough it is years ago that I have read this fascinating novel about a politician, his wife, her disappearance and their lies of life, I still can smell the village, the lake and the wood. Particularely interesting in this novel is Tim O'Brian's construction of the novel and the three levels of footnotes he uses. They sometimes address the reader, explore and drive on the story or give detailed facts on a former lawsuit of his main character. Overall: A pleasant read, a thrilling novel and definitely a very good recommendation. One of my favourite books of the last years.

Weird, in a good way..., 28 Mar 2006
I found this book slightly confusing, but I actually think that was O'Brien's intention. He cleverly blurs fantasy and reality, while at the same time conjuring up vivid and distrbing images of the Vietnam war. It is very well written throughout and O'Brien's style keeps you hooked.

I bought this book after reading "If I Die in a Combat Zone", and to be honest I didn't enjoy this book as much. It's still very good, don't get me wrong, but if you're going to read one book by Tim O'Brien then go for "If I Die".

Fantastic, 24 Jan 2003
I was enthralled by this book. It's confusing at first, mixing in different narrative streams, but as you realise what's happening the story's power grows.

O'Brien writes so well, and certain chapters stick in my memory as perfect stand-alone images of the war - soldiers arriving at a hot LZ, or trudging up a hill trail in the jungle. It's a book I will certainly re-read one day, and I'd recommend it - an ingenious blend of gritty realism and fantasy.

paris before breakfast, 23 Jun 2002
Tim O'Brien's book made me smile, laugh and cry. The beauty of the book is in the possibility that imagination can be the reserve of young men dealing with being thrust into horrific situations. Cacciato's moon like face should draw us all on to imagine what lies underneath the hole.

A good, not great, read, 22 Mar 2000
Overall, this was a pretty good book but it retrospect it came across more as a warm-up for The Things They Carried (an excellent, five-star book.) O'Brien plays around a little with magic realism here but if you're read anything about the Vietnam War, a lot of this book will be real familiar.

Rivetting, 29 Nov 2007
This is not a book that glorifies war. It does on the other hand engage fully with the experience what it is to live through combat. O'Brien tells the story of his tour of duty in Vietnam, warts and all. He is clearly an intelligent man, haunted by his experiences, enough so to write a book about them, although not necessarily tortured by them. He is articulate, thoughtful and matter of fact in the way he tells his story. It is full of the ups and downs of a soldier's life, the boredom, the thrills, the day to day drill and the trauma of battle. A fascinating book.

An OK account of the Vietnam experience - but it fails to convince, 23 Oct 2006
"Nobody has written about the Vietnam War with more eloquence than Tim O'Brien." So says the quote from the Washington Star on the book's cover, going on to add, "[this] may be the greatest piece of work to come out of Vietnam." I don't know when that review was penned but I suspect it was pretty soon after the book was first published in 1973. I say that because there are now no shortage of works of both fiction and non-fiction (and some in between - 13th Valley) which write at least as eloquently about Vietnam and, in my opinion, are greater pieces of work on the subject.

O'Brien objected to the war in Vietnam, even going as far as to map out detailed plans for an escape to a neutral country during his first leave from basic training. He says, in the brief interview transcribed at the back of the book, that 'If I Die...' is about, "...the daily brutalities...that were the consequences of abstract political ideas gone haywire." The book then is supposed to be an exploration of the rightness of the US's involvement in the Vietnam war in particular, and the rightness of any nation builders' involvement in any military capacity in general. O'Brien is obviously of the opinion that it is inherently wrong and flawed, and seems to think that just laying his day to day experiences of being a footsoldier on a tour in Vietnam before us is all the evidence he needs to convince the reader.

Personally I am more of the opinion that the 'daily brutalities' he describes in the book are more compelling evidence of the general poor quality and malaise that was endemic amongst the young generation of draftees during Vietnam than it was evidence of any nation's policies. An old-school WWII veteran, Major Callicles, who takes over O'Brien's company towards the end of his tour makes just such a point. O'Brien's army unit were deployed into the My Lai area of operations - just a year after the infamous Pinkville massacre. Callicles was irked by the laziness, pot smoking, whoring, long hair, racial divisions and basic absence of professionalism he saw around him, claiming disaffected and unprofessional soldiering was to more blame for My Lai: Pinkville wouldn't have happened in WWII.

Now I don't know if that's true; I wouldn't be surprised if similar US atrocities can be highlighted in WWII or Korea or elsewhere. But I'm afraid Tim O'Brien's account graphically confirms what a shambles the troops and their officers were at that time, and it's difficult not to suspect that much of the behaviour that O'Brien is describing is due to dreadful soldiering rather than misguided policy as he tries to show. O'Brien's unit were hopeless - preferring to radio in phantom sit-reps and even artillery missions from the security of their base than to go out patrolling aggressively. Even when they did patrol, they ignored noise and light discipline, dumped essential kit they couldn't be bothered to carry, didn't bother with listening posts, routinely fell asleep on watch and prefered to use human shields for insurance against night infiltration than to set up proper defensive positions. When going out on patrol the last thing they wanted to do was make contact with VC, preferring instead to use grenades or, better and more indiscriminate still, napalm than to risk prying too closely into suspect villages and trails. The result was that, in concentrating on self defense and preservation above all else, they shambled grudgingly around their AO just getting picked off by booby traps and snipers and, paradoxically, had an appalling casualty rate as a result.

The overwhelming impression I got from the book - which is an OK, if brief read - is not what horrible folly war is as O'Brien intended. Of course war is a catastrophic folly, but 'If I Die in a Combat Zone' was not proof of that (Phil Caputo's 'A Rumor of War' achieves that much more stylishly and convincingly). The overwhelming impression I got from the book was just how hopeless, moribund and wracked with self-fulfilling fear of the enemy (and we're talking a plain unwillingness to fight rather than any widely held political or moral objections) a certain section of the 1960s American draft generation were.

Superb!, 25 Jan 2006
We all think we know about the Vietnam war. The brutality, the slaughter, the insanity - a very general view. This book takes the reader right into the thick of it. You're not viewing the war on the General's map, you're right there in the fox hole with your buddies. This is the tale of a normal man living through the war. It's not a political text. There's no "slant" put on the events. It's just a straight forward personal story. Like sitting down and listening to a veteran talk - that's O'Brien's style and it is captivating.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. Whether you have an interest in the Vietnam war or not, you won't want to put it down.

Madness, Insanity & Banality in the field, 26 May 2004
Interesting recollections of a year in Vietnam some 35 years ago. The emphasis is very much upon how many different weapons can kill you in how many different ways; but given the situation, what else is there to concern yourself with but survival?

A fine "On the Ground View", 30 May 2001
This is not a history book, tactics and plans are not discussed. This is a book of survival, survival of a naïve individual who quickly gets the fastest lesson in maturity required - infantry soldier war. O'Brien's book is riveting reading, it is basic and direct, it quickly knocks any glory to be had in being in Vietnam. This is a book of survival, one were friendships can end quickly. O'Brien does not ask for sympathy he only appears to want the reader to try and understand what it is was like for the common GI.

Can do better!, 30 May 2008
If, like myself you have arrived at this novel after reading O'Brien's other literary offerings: 'The Things they Carried' - Excellent, 'If I Should Die in a Combat Zone' - Pretty Good, and 'Going After Cacciato' - Utterly Brilliant. Then like myself, you will probably be disappointed if you spend your valuable time and lay down you hard-earned, for this VERY mediocre novel. Clearly at the early stage of his career when this was written O'Brien did not possess any great gift for entirely fictitious story-telling, and certainly not outside of his Vietnam 'comfort-zone'.

Billed as somewhere between an epic suspense and a personal growth tale built on many subtle layers, it really is anything but. What it is, is a very average, bland story of no particular suspense, nor growth, evolution nor metamorphosis. All built around a very tenuous cross-country skiing experience that never really delivers any thrills or nail-biting. O'Brien spins his uniform, colourless yarn at an average pace and it's more like a train journey rather than a roller-coaster ride. Not much tensions and not much detail. No neatly drawn characters of carefully painted faces.

O'Brien's ultimate downfall lies in the previous point, in the fact he cannot paint pictures in the reader's mind. The old debate of the written versus the pictorial; the book verses the film is a mute point here. The writer should be at least capable (willing) to deliver enough adjectives and adverbs so as to allow us to use that as glue to add to the nouns and verbs and build our own visual puzzle, but sadly, in this case he clearly does not. His painting is altogether too wishy-washy, too much like some abstract water-colour that leaves the reader squinting trying to match the title to the visual imagery.

Compare this kind of writing to some masters of descriptive writing; Salinger, Hesse, Orwell, or contemporaries like Easton Ellis or Murakami Haruki and you realise that O'Brien is way out of his league in tackling this kind novel. Likewise his publishers were foolish to ever allow this to reach the printing press. One cannot help correlating this to one of those albums greedy record companies put out; albums full of out-takes, b-sides and half ideas better left on the studio floor.

Ultimately this book is bland and fruitless, uninteresting and unchallenging. It neither gives nor takes anything from the reader and offers not the slightest revelation nor ponderous moment, it is pulp-fiction at its worse, and in my mind that is a waste of time and trees. My advice, check out his other three offerings mentioned above, and you won't be disappointed - leave this one to be consigned to the bargain bins and the library shelves.

Moody and gripping...an adventure becomes a misadventure., 10 Oct 2003
I'm a fan of Tim O'Briens yet this novel disturbed me as much as any of his Vietnam books - wish i knew why! O'Brien swaps Vietnam for the American backwoods. At the heart of the book is the relationship between two very different brothers. The troubled, analytical Perry and the volatile returning war vet Harvey. O'Brien ensures this is no happy family reunion by throwing into the mix out of the ordinary set pieces and characters. Even the two women Grace and Addie are far from straight forward. Each of the four main characters are enigmatic and deep and made me want to know more about who they really were and how they had got there. Set in the wilderness, life is quiet and slow until the ordinary suddenly appears extraordinary and you don't realise the steady pace has quickened till you are running fast with it. Ghosts from the past are less frightening than the realities of the present and the conflicts between the leads. When Perry and Harvey set off on a skiing trip through the remote woodlands the suspense mounts and the challenge becomes more than just one between two rival brothers. The atmosphere and expectancy leaps from the pages and pulls you with it right to the unforgettable ending. A tense, well crafted read about self discovery and strained relationships that left a strange taste in my mind.

Haunting and compelling, an adventure that stays with you., 12 Jan 2001
What an interesting book. The central character is the complex Perry and the book is based on his relationship with his brother Harvey, Harvey's girlfriend Addie and Perry's wife, the long suffering Grace. On the surface, the book is about survival in the snow covered woods of Minnesota, however, the dynamics between the brothers is what this book is really all about. The author keeps the reader wanting to know more about Grace and Addie and keeps the brothers at the fore. This is one of those books that is like a good wine - it is enjoyable at the time and yet it is only now that I have finished that I realise how good it was. I am actually missing the experience of reading this book and I would love to read a sequel. Unfortunately there will not be one.

Possibly one of the very best..., 25 Feb 2008
A truly, truly remarkable collection of short stories. I am not generally a short story reader, but the title so intrigued me I had to give it a go. I was stunned. I was left speechless. The prose is wonderful, and the sheer simplicity with which he brings about an understanding of what it was like to be an American teenager, and then suddenly, almost inexplicably, you are in the middle of Hell. I cannot say enough good things about this book. I truly, truly, truly loved it. Wonderful!

Truer as Fiction, 20 Jul 2007
Is it possible to be honest when the truth is unknown, and which truth anyway would we choose to tell if we knew it?
The Things They Carried is a book about the Viet Nam war, a war aided by GI Tim O'Brien. It is not a collection of short stories, it is not a novel. It is imagined truth trying to tell a story bigger than itself, and succeeding through the medium of fiction.
O'Brien writes with a simplicity that is profound. He is a magician pulling - not rabbits out of hats - but meaning from experience. After college he was summoned to fight a war in a foreign country. He didn't believe in the war and he didn't want to die and he struggled to decide on how to react to his draft papers.
He went to war.
Viet Nam becomes a kind of mist, partly collective, partly personal. O'Brien mixes fact with story telling to carve some kind of route through the mist. Places - Song Tra Bong, Quang Ngai, My Khe - become recurring characters, characters who seep into the landscape:

'He was under the mud and the water, folded in with the war, and their only thought was to find him and dig him out and then move on to some place dry and warm.'
(In the Field, p 163)

The reader joins O'Brien in his mist and the mist begins to make sense. It makes the sense of dimly remembered personal and collective truths. We go to war with the writer, recognising the humanity within through the horror without. We don't have to leave our armchairs to do this. It is, partly at least, the war of retaining a sense of honour in a world that mocks honour; a war with ourselves that can only be survived by the slow process of separating what is true from what is false. We are encouraged to observe the illusion of fact, to find the story. But to honour also our need to distance ourselves from human acts of inhumanity - our own and those of others.
On occasion O'Brien attributes acts of shame to others only to confess later it was his weakness that cost the life of a friend. He is honest enough to lie, sensitive enough to reflect and ultimately brave enough to share his darkness in public. Here, the process involved in being weak to be strong, in finding power through honesty, unfolds with grace - like the petals of some carnivorous plant.

'"Takes guts, I know that."
"It wasn't guts. I was scared."
Kiowa shrugged "Same difference."
(The Lives of the Dead, p 223)

It is tempting to seek to classify this book into some containable genre, something to make the journey feel safer. It is a war story; it is autobiography; it is fable or horror. It is all those things and therefore it is more. Quietly, The Things They Carried melds the concept of genre into insignificance. The book is a tour de force. Relax into it, read it as an epic poem - above all listen to it. This is a profound book telling the truth in the only way humans can understand truth - through fiction.

Funny as well as sad, 19 Apr 2007
Somewhere between a short story collection and a novel, somewhere between fiction and memories is Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, a wonderful book about a terrible war.

O'Brien takes us into the life and minds of soldiers in a fashion rarely witnessed in fiction. Most characters in the book come alive and some of them the reader gets to really feel bad for when things go wrong. It's also a book with a wonderfully funny, in a strange way, story like the Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, a great story on it's own. It is also placed in the right order of stories in the book to have maximum effect, both on it's own and in a way to make the other stories more effective. We also have notes that can shock the reader. "Speaking of Courage was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa." (Page 155)

An amazing book, 06 Jul 2005
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED is a powerful memoir in the form of a collection of short stories about the haunting life of Tim O'Brien and a company of soldiers in Vietnam.
The Things They Carried was a thought-provoking and inspirational book. This highly vivid description of the Vietnam War kept me reading through the night until the last page. I am not a big reader but once I picked up this book I was reading for hours! This book gives a taste of Vietnam for those who were not there. The interesting thing about this book is that it tells the true life of the soldiers giving us a better idea of what the soldiers went, and what war really is. One comes close to understanding how the feelings from going to war, leaving their families behind them, losing loved friends, killing another man, and how the pathetic nature of the foods and sleeping conditions; all traumas of war that can change a human being forever.

If you like war novels, then this is a must read. Even if you don't like war books and think they're all the same, read this and you will reconsider. One thing for sure is that you will appreciate the style of writing and the way it makes you think. You still get to laugh despite the deaths and destructions. The soldiers seem to taunt life with life and death games. Written with a deep message and in a manner similar to CHEKHOV AND TISI JANVIER, this anthology of related short stories about the Vietnam War portrays men who faced their fears, confronted danger, came out alive but became scarred for life.

BRUTAL HONESTY, 15 Jan 2002
The first thing that grabbed me about O'Brien's collection of short stories about the Vietnam war, was the stark realism. This is an exploration of the human condition rather than a war story per se. O'Brien's prose is lathered with irony and a distinct sense of hopelessness pervades his eloquent narrative. Emotions are laid bare, and the psychological turmoil caused by the war itself are presented with veracity and aplomb. This is realism of the highest order. Simply brilliant
billy proctor
sunderland

Possibly one of the very best..., 25 Feb 2008
A truly, truly remarkable collection of short stories. I am not generally a short story reader, but the title so intrigued me I had to give it a go. I was stunned. I was left speechless. The prose is wonderful, and the sheer simplicity with which he brings about an understanding of what it was like to be an American teenager, and then suddenly, almost inexplicably, you are in the middle of Hell. I cannot say enough good things about this book. I truly, truly, truly loved it. Wonderful!

Truer as Fiction, 20 Jul 2007
Is it possible to be honest when the truth is unknown, and which truth anyway would we choose to tell if we knew it?
The Things They Carried is a book about the Viet Nam war, a war aided by GI Tim O'Brien. It is not a collection of short stories, it is not a novel. It is imagined truth trying to tell a story bigger than itself, and succeeding through the medium of fiction.
O'Brien writes with a simplicity that is profound. He is a magician pulling - not rabbits out of hats - but meaning from experience. After college he was summoned to fight a war in a foreign country. He didn't believe in the war and he didn't want to die and he struggled to decide on how to react to his draft papers.
He went to war.
Viet Nam becomes a kind of mist, partly collective, partly personal. O'Brien mixes fact with story telling to carve some kind of route through the mist. Places - Song Tra Bong, Quang Ngai, My Khe - become recurring characters, characters who seep into the landscape:

'He was under the mud and the water, folded in with the war, and their only thought was to find him and dig him out and then move on to some place dry and warm.'
(In the Field, p 163)

The reader joins O'Brien in his mist and the mist begins to make sense. It makes the sense of dimly remembered personal and collective truths. We go to war with the writer, recognising the humanity within through the horror without. We don't have to leave our armchairs to do this. It is, partly at least, the war of retaining a sense of honour in a world that mocks honour; a war with ourselves that can only be survived by the slow process of separating what is true from what is false. We are encouraged to observe the illusion of fact, to find the story. But to honour also our need to distance ourselves from human acts of inhumanity - our own and those of others.
On occasion O'Brien attributes acts of shame to others only to confess later it was his weakness that cost the life of a friend. He is honest enough to lie, sensitive enough to reflect and ultimately brave enough to share his darkness in public. Here, the process involved in being weak to be strong, in finding power through honesty, unfolds with grace - like the petals of some carnivorous plant.

'"Takes guts, I know that."
"It wasn't guts. I was scared."
Kiowa shrugged "Same difference."
(The Lives of the Dead, p 223)

It is tempting to seek to classify this book into some containable genre, something to make the journey feel safer. It is a war story; it is autobiography; it is fable or horror. It is all those things and therefore it is more. Quietly, The Things They Carried melds the concept of genre into insignificance. The book is a tour de force. Relax into it, read it as an epic poem - above all listen to it. This is a profound book telling the truth in the only way humans can understand truth - through fiction.

Funny as well as sad, 19 Apr 2007
Somewhere between a short story collection and a novel, somewhere between fiction and memories is Tim O'Brien's The T