Quirky, and a little bit dark. It's been long enough now since I read it that I'm very fuzzy on most of the details, but I enjoyed it enough to immediately pick up book #2. Dandy is a little odd at the start, and her partnership with a male character that's not her husband is innocent yet intriguing and challenging to my sense of what one could get away with during the time (the interval between WW1 and WW2).
Door 6: Veterans / Armistice Day
Task 1: Sunrise services are a staple of this day: Take a picture of the sunrise where you live and share it with us.
Yesterday was the only sunny day we had. Today of course we have rain. Here you go!
Task 2: In keeping with the minute of silence, tell us about the authors who have passed this year that you will miss the most.
For me it's going to be Toni Morrison. Her voice was and still is much needed when discussing the African American experience via literature. Books like "The Bluest Eye" and "Beloved" are must reads.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it.
Task 3: Rosemary is for remembrance, but it’s great for chasing away moths, silverfish and other bugs that can damage books (and linens). Make a sachet with some rosemary, lavender, dried basil, etc. to keep on your bookshelves – post a picture of the results and let us know what combinations of herbs you used. A list of possibilities can be found here: https://www.mnn.com/your-home/organic-farming-gardening/stories/12-plants-that-repel-unwanted-insects
Task 4:The Forest of Compiègne, just outside Compiègne, France, is the site of the signing of the 1918 Armistice. It was also the site of the signing by the French of a truce with the Germans following the German invasion in 1940. – Find a green space in your local area (or favorite area) and go for a walk or bike ride of a mile (or 1.61 km) and post a picture or screenshot of the map of where you walked / biked.
So on Saturday I did a Turkey trot run that was almost 3 miles and Sunday went to Shenandoah. I did Dickey Ridge Area and had a fun time. See the trail map and some pictures I took below.
Book: Read a book involving a war, battle, or where characters are active military or veterans, or with poppies on the cover, or honor the ‘unknown soldier’ of your TBR and read the book that’s been there the longest.
[X]
Tasks Completed: 3
The authors by whom I've read the most books don't coincide exactly, but substantially with those that I'd also consider part of my personal canon; i.e., the books that have most impacted my thinking and / or to which I find myself returning again and again, be it for inspiration, comfort, or whatever other reasons. So, since I've always wanted to follow up with a post of my own on Moonlight's original "personal literary canon" post, somewhat late in the game I've decided to use this "24 Festive Tasks" entry (and Mawlid, Task 2 -- literary pilgrimages) to finally get around to it. At the risk of some serious rambling and long lists of name-dropping:
William Shakespeare: I wasn't a fan of his in high school, though I did very much like Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, and Romeo and Juliet (the latter, actually quite a bit better than I like it right now); but once I'd been bitten there was no stopping me. I've seen many (though not yet all) of Shakespeare's plays performed live, some repeatedly, I own the BBC "Complete Shakespeare" set featuring all plays attributed to him at the time of production in the late 1970s / early 1908s, and no other single author (not even the much more prolific Agatha Christie; see below) is taking up as much space on my bookshelves and DVD racks. For a few years before there was such a thing as Wordpress and Blogger, I actually owned a website called "Project Hamlet" -- chiefly dedicated to my personal take on the Prince of Denmark's story, but also featuring information on Shakespeare himself. Hosting and renewing the domain got too expensive after a while, so I let the domain expire, but I'm still hoping to resurrect it some day as a Wordpress blog.
Jane Austen: I've read all seven of her completed novels, as well as some of her juvenalia (The History of England, which she wrote at [gasp] age 13, is a compete and utter hoot) and letters (well, Selected Letters in the Oxford Classics edition). I've also read her uncompleted novels (Sanditon and The Watsons) at least once, but probably should refresh my recollection of those at some point. -- It's been said before by more authoritative voices, but unfortunately bears repeating time and again: Whoever dismisses Austen as "only a romance" or "only a chick-lit" writer probably hasn't read a syllable by her in their lives and can get stuffed. On general principles (there's no such thing as "only romance" or "only chick-lit), but as importantly on Austen's behalf: she was a sharp-eyed social observer and a satirist of the first order, who just happened to make women's stories her focus because she was a woman herself ... and who wrote about love, marriage and the hunt for moneyed gentlemen, because these (especially marriage, and the need to marry well regardless of a love match) were the factors that literally everything in a woman's life depended on in Regency society -- as it had, for the better part of Western history until then.
The Brontë Sisters: I fell in love with Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre before I'd ever even heard of Jane Austen, and to this day this book, and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (and to a somewhat lesser extent, Charlotte Brontë's Shirley) exemplify 19th century women's -- and indeed every woman's -- struggle for self-respect, independence, and the attempt to square the circle and maintain these achievements even in marriage. Emily's Wuthering Heights is a bit to (melo)dramatically overwrought to be my kind of jam, but I love her poetry ... and the siblings' (including their brother Bramwell) juvenalia are bursts of imagination and simply a complete hoot.
Elizabeth von Arnim: I have by far not yet read all of her books, but enough of them to know that every single one of those that I do read makes me want to break out in a (very uncharacteristical) radiant smile. Elizabeth's Adventures in Rügen also was one of those books that inspired me to visit a place that a famous author had visited, and trace her steps there.
Thomas Mann / the Mann family: I read all of Thomas Mann's novels (yes, including all four novels of the Joseph tetralogy) and short stories eons ago when I was in university -- which is long enough ago for me to have forgotten a lot of details, especially of that part of his literature that I haven't revisited since, but I'm still partial to Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus and Felix Krull, as well as some of his better known short stories (including and in particular, Death in Venice and Mario and the Magician). The Manns -- all of them, but especially Thomas -- were held to be national treasures in my family, so it's just as well I actually did take to their books; in addition to Thomas's books also his brother Heinrich's Man of Straw and Blue Angel, as well as his son Klaus's Mephisto.
John Steinbeck: I came to Steinbeck via the James Dean movie adaptation of East of Eden and was an instant fan -- perhaps because I was allowed to discover his books for myself, instead of having them presented to me as "Must Read" / Important literature in school. Few authors have such an unmatched insight into the human soul, and the ability to present complex situations and emotions precisely and down to the last nuance, with very sparing words (yes, I know East of Eden is a brick, but just take a look at The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men). Steinbeck, along with that part of my family who used to live in the American Southwest (Texas, but still ...) on and off when I was growing up are also chiefly responsible for my interest in California, long before I'd ever actually visited the Golden State for the very first time.
Oscar Wilde: Much more than the master of the witty one-liner and some of the most charming and heartrending fairy tales ever written, Wilde was actually a widely-read and -educated literary and social critic, journalist, conversationalist and focal point of London society long before his plays conquered stages at home and abroad. He may have espoused the idea of letting each literary work stand for itself and define its own merit ("l'art pour l'art" / "art for its own sake"), but it is impossible to miss the profound underlying humanity of his works -- in his plays as much as in the products of his imprisonment, such as De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Goal. And while there are many great biographies of Wilde in book form, for a first take you can't do any better than watching the movie Wilde starring (who else?) Stephen Fry (whom Wilde's grandson and editor Mervyn Holland has called "a wonderful Oscarian figure").
Robert Louis Stevenson: My first introduction to Scotland (Edinburgh and elsewhere), decades before I ever visited. I binge-watched the 1970s' TV adaptation of Kidnapped (running under the name The Adventures of David Balfour) as a teenager and was instantly captured, but have since learned in other books, too, just how acute an observer of human nature -- and of Scottish society -- Stevenson was. When I finally visited Scotland for the first time, even more than a century later I still felt instantly at home, not least thanks to Stevenson (and Ian Rankin -- see below).
Greek Mythology: Believe it or not, the heroes and gods of Greek mythology were actually the very first childhood heroes I can recall, and I never stopped regretting we hardly saw any ancient classic literature on our high school curriculum (which instead was crammed with the mandatory 1970s/80s reform agenda). But seriously, why would have wanted to read about other kids who didn't know anything more about life than I did myself if I could read about deities like Zeus's clever daughter Athena and her equally fiendishly clever protégé Odysseus instead? I've since revisited the Greek classics in every form I could find and they still hold a special place in my heart.
Arthur Conan Doyle / Sherlock Holmes: Still the grand master -- both the detective and his creator -- that no serious reader of mysteries can or should even try to side-step. I've read, own, and have reread countless times all 4 novels and 56 short stories constituting the Sherlock Holmes canon, and am now making my way through some of the better-known /-reputed Holmes pastiches (only to find -- not exactly to my surprise -- that none of them can hold a candle to the original), as well as Conan Doyle's "non-Holmes" fiction. Oh, and for the record, there is and always will be only one Sherlock Holmes on screen, and that is Jeremy Brett.
The Golden Age Queens of Crime
Agatha Christie: Like Sherlock Holmes, part of my personal canon from very early on. I've read and, in many cases, reread more than once and own (largely as part of a series of anniversary omnibus editions published by HarperCollins some 10 years ago) all of Agatha Christie's novels and short stories published under this name, as well as her autobiography, with only those of her books published under other names (e.g., the Mary Westmacott romances) left to read. As with ACD's Holmes, there is only one defining screen incarnation of both of Christie's major detectives to me: David Suchet as Poirot and Joan Hickson as Miss Marple. (And I'm happy in the knowledge that in the latter respect, Dame Agatha and I would seem to be in agreement.)
Dorothy L. Sayers: My mom turned me onto Sayers when I was in my teens, and I have never looked back. I've read all of her Lord Peter Wimsey novels and short stories, volume 1 of her collected letters (which covers her correspondence from childhood to the end of her career as a mystery writer), and some of her non-Wimsey short stories and essays. Gaudy Night and the two addresses jointly published under the title Are Women Human? are among my all-time favorite books; not least because they address women's position in society decades before feminism even became a mass movement to be reckoned with, and with a validity vastly transcending both Sayers's own lifetime and our own. -- Next steps: The remainder of Sayers's non-Wimsey stories and of her essays, as well as her plays.
Ngaio Marsh: A somewhat later entry into my personal canon, but definitely a fixture now. I've read all of her Inspector Alleyn books and short stories and reread many of them. Still on my TBR: her autobiography (which happily is contained in the last installments of the series of 3-book-each omnibus volumes I own).
Patricia Wentworth: Of the Golden Age Queens of Crime, the most recent entry into my personal canon. I'd read two books by her a few years ago and liked one a lot, the other one considerably less, but Tigus expertly steered the resident mystery fans on Booklikes to all the best entries in the Miss Silver series, which I'm now very much looking forward to completing -- along with some of Wentworth's other fiction.
Georgette Heyer: I'm not a romance reader, so I doubt that I'll ever go anywhere near her Regency romances. But I'm becoming more and more of a fan of her mysteries; if for no other reason than that nobody, not even Agatha Christie, did viciously bickering families as well as her.
Margery Allingham: I'm actually more of a fan of Albert Campion as portrayed by Peter Davison in the TV adaptations of some of Allingham's mysteries than of her Campion books as such, but I like at least some of those well enough to eventually want to complete the series -- God knows I've read enough of them at this point for the completist in me to have kicked in long ago. I've also got Allingham's very first novel, Blackerchief Dick (non-Campion; historical fiction involving pirates) sitting on my audio TBR.
Josephine Tey: I have barely read half of Tey's books so far (if that), but her tone and topics definitely strike a chord with me. So I have acquired every book of her Inspector Grant series and I am hoping to complete the series soon -- and also, to dive into some other books by / related to Tey.
Contemporary Mysteries
P.D. James
Ian Rankin
Michael Connelly
[Text to be supplied -- I'm being called away just when I'm finally getting ready to complete this post!]
Historical Mysteries
I'm a history nerd, and with that comes a love of historical fiction; yet, the only two series of historical fiction that I would well and truly consider part of my personal canon are both mystery series as well:
The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael: He may be a monk when we meet him, but nobody epitomizes "father figure" to me more than Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael. Way above and beyond Peters's unfailingly spot-on historical research and her intimate knowledge of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, and the Welsh borderland (the Marches), I love this series for Cadfael's humanity, his insight into human nature and acceptance of every person on their own terms, as well as, of course, his warmth, intelligence, and broad-mindedness. And nobody else could have embodied Cadfael like Derek Jacobi, whom I first encountered in that series (not, like others, in I, Claudius) and became an instant fan.
C.J. Sansom / Matthew Shardlake: I binge-read the first three Shardlake books and consider myself an instant fan ever since. Shardlake and his associates are engaging characters, and nobody does the Tudor court and its manifold machinations like C.J. Sansom. Can't wait to see where he is going to take the series now that Henry VIII is dead and the reign of his children has been ushered in.
I'm not a major reader of fantasy (and even less so, science fiction), but three authors are most definitely part of my personal canon, because their books vastly transcend the boundaries of that (or any) genre:
J.R.R. Tolkien: I first read The Lord of the Rings when I had barely turned 13, and The Hobbit a year or two later. Frodo and Gollum between them may have taken The Ring back to Mount Doom, but it has never lost its pull on me and never will. The Peter Jackson movie adaptations of The Lord of the Rings are not perfect, but I've become a big fan of theirs, too, and wouldn't want to miss them from my personal movie library now, either. (The adaptations of The Hobbit are a different matter, Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield notwithstanding.)
Terry Pratchett: I'm a relatively late Discworld devotee, but I'm seriously wondering what took me so long. Pratchett's literary genius, sense of humor, and fiendish way of mixing social commentary, send-ups of iconic topics, genres, characters and other literary conventions, and clever, surprising plotlines into a creation all of its own is unmatched -- and though I have a fair way to go yet to finish the Discworld novels, I already know that I'll regret that moment when it comes at last.
J.K. Rowling / Harry Potter: I'm instinctively turned off by hype of any kind, so you can probably imagine my initial reaction to Harry Potter, quite probably the most hyped literary series of the past 20+ years. But Harry and his friends won me over on their own merits ... well, and those of J.K. Rowling's writing. I revisited the entire series earlier this year and was enchanted all over again -- so much so that I splurged and invested in the recently-published hard cover boxed set, as well as the boxed set of "Hogwarts Library" books (Phantastic Beasts, Quidditch Through the Ages, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard), as well as starting the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw "collectors' editions" series of the Harry Potter books.
Astrid Lindgren: When I was barely old enough to read, Pippi Longstocking taught me that girls don't have to be afraid of anybody and they can go everywhere they set their minds to. I still believe that to this day. -- Some of my childhood friends and I also loved her Noisy Village (Bullerbyn, or in German, Bullerbü) series well enough to emulate the characters and stories in our games.
The Three Investigators: The series I blame like practically no other for turning me into a mystery fan. For my money still one of the best-ever conceived mystery series ... and an honest-to-God crime hunt with input from Alfred Hitchcock himself; what's not to like? (The German incarnation was called "The Three ???" [or "The Three Question Marks"], incidentally, and featured a red, white and blue question mark on each book cover.)
Enid Blyton: I didn't read anywhere near all of her books and series, but her Five Friends series satisfied basically the same youthful reading desires as did The Three Investigators ... and I was also a dedicated reader of her St. Clare's / O'Sullivan Twins series, even after I started attending a school that offered both full and half board in addition to "ordinary" class attendance, and from personal experience concluded that her version of a boarding school was wildly fictitious -- which didn't stop me from wishing, however, that just a few of the things from her books were actually happening in my school, too. (We did make good on the "secret nighttime parties" thing on some school trips at least.)
Ellis Kaut / Pumuckl: Like Pippi Longstocking and the Bullerbyn children, Ellis Kaut's creation, the kobold / gnome Pumuckl who some day suddenly decides to take residence in a Munich master carpenter's workshop, was a very early companion of my childhood -- and I would dearly have loved to meet him and to believe that the footsteps that one day showed up on the beach where we were vacationing were really his. Alas, they were only a Pumuckl-style prank that my cousins played on me ...
Max Kruse / Urmel: The last, but by no means least literary companion of my early childhood was the dinosaur baby Urmel, who hatches on an island "right under the equator" where a Dr. Dolittle-like professor is living with his merry band of tallking animals, all of which have a particular (and very funny) phonetic quirk associated with the sounds they ordinarily make as animals. A childhood friend first turned me onto the Urmel stories as they were presented in a TV program by Germany's most famous puppet theatre company (they're still in existence and in business) -- I instantly had to have the books as well.
Karl May: Another writer whose books I swallowed hide and hair as a child -- and whose protagonists were among my very first childhood heroes -- was German Western / travel adventure writer Karl May. Never mind that he only ever visited the places he wrote about later in life (if at all), and never mind that his writing is replete with the facile clichés of his time, his novels were / are gripping enough to have spawned an enormous fan base in Germany to this day, complete with annual productions of stage adaptations of his most famous books in several outdoor theatres dedicated entirely to his works; and the 1960s and 1970s screen adaptations of his Westerns propelled his two major heroes (the Apache chief Winnetou and his white "blood brother", a German-born trapper / mountain man known as Old Shatterhand) to even greater iconic stature.
Well at least this book counted toward something. Dash is ex-Army intelligence. He is also very stupid. So is Ashley. But that is neither here and there. Look I love romantic comedies. You know how many times I have watched "To All the Boys I've Loved Before?" I laughed and weeped my way through "Crazy Rich Asians" and "The Big Sick." This book tried so hard, and it just didn't work.
Dashing Through the Snow has Dashiell Sutherland and Ashley Davison trying to fly out of San Francisco to get to Seattle. When Ashley is weirdly told that she can't get a flight, but Dash is being told he can, Ashley leaves in a huff talking about sexism and just because Dash is "eye-candy" doesn't mean he should get prioritized over her. Usually I would be all rah rah for the sister-hood but I loathed Ashley throughout this book. From there Ashley goes to a car rental place and runs into Dash again (they offered standby, he said no) and she is encouraged to rent a vehicle with him via the car rental agent. Why the hell a stranger would tell a woman on her own to get in a car with some dude she doesn't know baffled me. Eventually Ashley is forced though since she is 24, she can't legally rent a car to drive (which has never made any sense to me). Dash agrees to take her, though Ashley demands to speak to his mother first. Of course Ashley can't believe that Dash is not married and that is the first question she peppers his mother about and why doesn't he have a relationship.
GAHHHH!
Anyway, the story moves slowly and poorly from this plot point. I maybe screeched at one point that these two idiots didn't even think about taking a train from San Francisco to Seattle. Recall me saying that they are not that smart.
Anyway Ashley acts butt-hurt that a total stranger doesn't want to talk about his personal life with a 24 year old woman (she acts 12) that he just met. And Ashley spends most of this disastrous road trip trying to get Dash to admit he is attracted to her and she's upset when he doesn't seem to be. This fool also decides to adopt a puppy when they get to a stop just because. The person trying to offload the puppy is a Vietnam vet, and it's weird that it was a thing in the book, but moving on. And frankly I was not on Ashley's side at all, because who does shit like this?
GAH!
Things get worse when Macomber transitions over to two FBI agents who are hot on this duo's trial and I can't even with this whole story-line. One of the older agents has a case of I am older and wiser than you and denigrates the younger agent the whole time.
We also get a motorcycle gang that is just there that makes my head hurt.
Ashley and Dash are chemistry rejects. They had no type of chemistry with each other. It didn't help that though I think Dash is 30, he is written to sound even older and Ashley acts like a hare-brain half the time.
The writing was so-so and the flow was awful.
"By age thirty Larry and I had had both our children. These days kids don’t feel the need to make a commitment.”
Ashley lowered her voice. Really, this wasn’t any of her business, but she was curious. “He isn’t involved with anyone?”
Why is this any of her business? Seriously. Anyone?
“Well, I’m not, either.” Ashley bristled, refusing to admit she was disappointed. The men she met at school and the diner were often not worth the effort.
Yep, Ashley is angry that Dash isn't attracted to her. We go back to this a billion times in this book.
“You named your dog Pickles?”
She brightened. “Cute, isn’t it?” She didn’t mention that she’d been the one to choose his name.
He shook his head. “It’s ridiculous. Poor dog probably died of embarrassment.”
That was a nasty thing to tell someone who just told you their family dog died. Gah.
Dash hadn’t been any better.
The bottom line, she realized, was that she’d wanted Dash to like her, to enjoy her company because she’d enjoyed his.
She took it personally that he hadn’t felt the same way about her.
Like I said, she's 12.
When the FBI eventually catches up to them, the whole book just stops and we had a FBI agent asking Dash is he in love with Ashley and keeps pressing the point and I felt embarrassed for this mythical character.
The setting of the book moves around a lot, though Seattle ends up being the final destination. No place really sounded real though. Most of the book is just terrible dialogue between Ashley and Dash, the two FBI agents, and jumps back and forth.
The ending was hilarious (to me) and not in a good way.
"Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" tells the story of a young soldier spending Thanksgiving in the early years of the Iraq war with the rest of "Bravo Company" as honoured guests of the Dallas Cowboys as part of a "victory tour" to build support for the war. Billy and the Bravos have been propelled into the spotlight by a Fox News video of a firefight of the Bravos going to the rescue of their comrades that went viral because it gave Americans back home something to cheer for.
As the day goes on we learn about Billy through a mix of memories, reflections and slightly stunned reactions to the often overwhelming here and now. Billy Lynn is literally the heart of the book. He's nineteen going on twenty, unassuming, just coming to terms with life and what it holds for him, matured by the war in ways he's only beginning to understand and puzzled and disturbed by the ferocity with which his fellow Americans talk about the war as they thank him for his service.
This is a beautiful book. The language is rich and diverse without being pompous or self-conscious. The themes of war, loss, fear and purpose are handled with a deft, light touch that nevertheless refuses to look away or to pretend.
Billy is real and likeable. He's not a message or a symbol. He's just a guy in a shitty place trying not to screw up and hoping not to get killed today. We share Billy's memory of spending the day before Thanksgiving with his family. Being with them again after experiencing the war finally helps him understand how much he has to lose and how desperately he wants to prevent that loss. Despite this, Billy feels compelled to do what the Army requires of him and return to Iraq to complete the last eleven months of his tour.
The novel is structured so that we get to America and Americans in the context of some of their greatest institutions: Privileged Wealth, American Football, and Hollywood.
In the Dallas Cowboy's VIP suite, Billy and his fellow Bravos are brought face to face with wealthy, powerful people they would never otherwise meet. As these millionaires repeat, with apparent sincerity and sometimes zeal, the same phrases "Honour...Sacrifice...Freedom...911...So proud...These Fine Young Men...911...Finest Fighting Force in the world...Real American Hero... 911...keeping us safe." Billy experiences increasing dissonance. He would follow his sergeant through hell and would die to protect the men he serves with but he finds the behaviour of the civilians he is fighting the war for almost incomprehensible. In a chapter called "We Are All Americans Here" the reader has cause to wonder if this statement is really true and if it is, what it says about America.
American Football is used to give another way of looking at America that contrasts the joy and physicality of an informal knock-around game between the Bravos on the sacred turf and the bloated immensity of the professional game. The Bravos are shown the huge excesses of the equipment used, the pampering of the players, the crappiness of the stadium, the boredom of the game with its frequent stops for referee referrals and commercial breaks, We see the expensive fan paraphernalia that none of the bravos can afford and the elite rooms full of millionaires spending Thanksgiving schmoozing with other millionaires in clichéd VIP suits. We meet the oversized players fascinated by the firepower of automatic weapons. Finally, we meet that most American of inventions, the Cheerleaders as the Bravos take part in the absurd extravagance of the Halftime show with it not-quite-neutered sexuality and its decorative militarism.
Hollywood is pulled into the book because a producer is trying to sell a movie deal for the Bravos, based on their well-known battle in Iraq. Hollywood is used as an example of the disproportionate power of belief, the worshipping of the fake, the unwillingness to see the real because it looks too fake and the power of the millionaire asshole. Hollywood is presented as the self-serving distorting mirror America holds up to itself.
The momentum of the book is sustained by force of Billy's personality. By his questions about what everything he's seeing means. By his desperate desire to live long enough to get together with his hot, Christian cheerleader so that he won't die a virgin. By his hunger to know more, to do more to be more. By his fantasy of having wife and children and leading a quiet life one day. By his unbreakable commitment to the men he serves with.
Hanging over everything that Billy hopes for is the knowledge that, in a few hours he'll be back on base and in a couple of days, back in Iraq for the remaining eleven months of his tour.
Ben Fountain skillfully presents the world through Billy's eyes and lets the reader draw their own conclusions. The message you take from this book may well depend on the opinions you had before you started reading it. It feels real and real life is never simple and never has a single clear didactic message.
I was moved by the way he brought the soldiers to life and made me care about them. They weren't saints. They weren't even unequivocally the good guys. Yet they were doing their job as well as they could and looking after each other like family As Fountain displayed, not unkindly but with unforgiving accuracy, the civilians the Bravos met, I felt the huge gap between the lives of the people at home and the people fighting on their behalf in Iraq.
This is Ben Fountain's first novel. I hope it won't be his last.
"Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" is well suited to being an audiobook. Oliver Wyman narrates the book with great skill. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample of his work.
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In a development that seems surreal given all that is said about Hollywood in this book, the novel has been made into a movie by Ang Lee that is due for release in November 2018.
You can see the movie poster and the trailer below. I think turning this book into a good movie while retaining the essence of the book is a challenge but if anyone can do it, Ang Lee can.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUULFJ_I048&w=560&h=315]
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