4 tough to assign stars

There has been quite a few years that I have wanted to read this book. As a child in the time this conflict was going on, I saw the news, I saw the bodies piling up, and I saw he tragedy of sending our young men into a zone where they became fodder for the enemy.

The writing is impeccable, drawing you into the trials, the hardships, the death and destruction of mind, body, and souls that these young men of eighteen and up suffered. Someone once said that war is hell and truly through the words of this novel, we see that hell. These young men became the pawns in a conflict that not a one wanted, yet our government and its leaders felt necessary. Was it? really, who knows? What we do know is that American souls were lost there, minds were entrenched in what they saw and did, and then these same young men came home to a country that spit upon them and called them baby killers. We had politicians and movie wonders siding with the enemy. So how did these boys handle that?

So, in essence, this was an anti war book. The only criticism I have was that this book seemed to be an accurate accounting of events, while perhaps it wasn't. In this, we were never sure. Separating fact from fiction took over the reading and while we may have thought events were true, we just could not be sure. In my humble opinion, this took away from the impact this novel once had.

Thank you to my sisters for the wonderful comments, discussions, and insight we all brought to this book. It was indeed a pleasure to share this novels many facets with women of vision and intelligence.

The line between fact and fiction is very blurred here in Tim O'Brien's award winning book of interrelated stories / thoughts about a group of young men who served in Vietnam. I love the title, The Things They Carried, literally it was love letters, scraps of photos, dope, mine detectors, ammunition etc. but figuratively they carried fear, doubt, confusion, along with scars on both their bodies and their souls. "They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often they carried each other, the wounded or weak." This is a very introspective book which surprised me by the amount of highlighting I found myself doing ! To paraphrase one thought ; when we think of war we mostly think of death but at close proximity with death you are also at your closest proximity with life. You recognize what's valuable. You look at the sunrise differently, wondering if you will see the sunset. Oddly enough you're never more alive than when you've had a brush with death. I enjoyed this book much more than expected, as I thought it was going to be full of gruesome scenes, and yep they're there , but not as defined as I feared. In one sentence I guess I'd say , It's more about the emotions of the battles than the blood. Read for my 100 best books you must read before you die , this book my #97/100 , surely deserves a spot on this list 4.5 stars

This is an excellent and thought-provoking collection of fictional short stories based on Mr. O'Brien's experiences in the Vietnam War. In an interesting literary device, the author inserted himself in the stories in what he calls "story-truth". He is, in effect, a fictional character in his own book. In the end, it doesn't matter if everything happened exactly as written to this particular group of soldiers, because it is story-truth. The line is blurred between fiction and non-fiction and probably conveys truth better than a play-by-play factual accounting could.

The book opens with one of the most powerful stories, a listing of what the soldiers carried into war: the heavy gear and supplies, pictures of sweethearts, and other personal items, but they also carried heavy emotions, like fear, responsibility, courage, guilt, and the hardest of all, cowardice. These emotions couldn't be put down at the end of the day like the gear, but lived with them every moment of every day and night. A sobering thought, very powerfully conveyed.

What follows the opening story is superbly written and gut-wrenching. O'Brien captures the horrors of war, the never-ending fear, the camaraderie, the chaos, and, of course death, as well as the repercussions for so many of our soldiers. For me, I found this to be an eye-opening follow-up after watching the excellent Ken Burns PBS series, The Vietnam War. O'Brien is interviewed in the documentary. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. Then read this book.

I read this with the Traveling Sisters group that included Brenda, Nikki, Marialyce, Jaline, and Diane. We read it slowly, savoring the stories, and discussing it along the way. Ladies, I so enjoyed reading with all of you and our discussions added so much depth and meaning to our reading.

You can find reviews of this and other books on the Sisters blog at:
https://twogirlslostinacouleereading....

I have read other comments about the writing tools that are used in this book. One of them is repetition -- some like it, some don't. One person observed that the author had intended to write a 250 book but he only got to 150 and then added the repetitions. Sounded a little cruel. I have a problem with short term memory. So sometimes I can't remember what I read 10 pages ago. Some repetitions just make deja vu for me. 'This seems so familiar,' I say. And I continue to slog through the fog.

I have just finished the book. It ended with a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye. I am of Vietnam age, undrafted and untested. One of the biggest questions in my life, "If I was drafted, what would I have done?" I can't imagine doing anything that is in this book. At the same time I feel the absence of all that in my life. And what if I would have gone to Canada? as I now mostly believe I would have done.

There are so many meaningful sentences, paragraphs and pages. I think of the story of removing Curt Lemon's body parts from the tree. I could read that and even smile at 'Lemon Tree very pretty'. But last night I watched The Hurt Locker and found it way too violent and gruesome. Probably no more blood and guts than this book but I gave it two stars because it was more than I could bear. I couldn't stop quivering as I watched the movie. To the book I give five stars. But could it have really been like that? I can't imagine. I could not have done that.

July 2019

This book was first published in 1990. The audible version was released in 2013.

This book is incredibly both filled with war and with humanity. It takes you into the person in Vietnam where the reality becomes stories 20 years later. The author talks about that process of converting reality into stories as he tells the stories.

And at the end of the audible book there is a one hour segment of essays written and read by the author in 1994 when he revisited Vietnam and the places he had been in 1969. He also talks about Mei Lai. This continues to be an incredible book. I have read many books about Vietnam and I probably still have a few more to read but as time has passed this era has had less of a focus for me simply because so many things continue to happen in my life. Vietnam is not any less important to me but slightly crowded out.

I read war novels. I've read quite a few war novels as a matter of fact and know that war is senseless and does things to young men that shouldn't be done and that young men in war see things that shouldn't be seen.

I got nearly halfway and then read a page of the worst, most sickening, animal cruelty I've ever encountered. One whole long paragraph that I didn't finish. It was in a chapter about true war stories, in which the author spent a great deal of repetition trying to tell the reader how to know a real war story from a fake war story.

If this had been written as a novel I would have been more than willing to read to the end. It wasn't especially well-written. It was mostly a disjointed piece of often short paragraphs (animal cruelty being an exception apparently). And there wasn't any war to it. None.

Nereden başlasam bilmiyorum. Bu kitap beni paramparça etti. Daha önce Amerikan Tarihi dersini alırken neredeyse 20 yıl süren Vietnam Savaşının iki taraf içinde ne kadar yıkıcı olduğunu, milyonlarca insanın belki de insanlık tarihinde en çok insanın öldüğü savaş olduğunu öğrenmiştim. Kendisi de Vietnam Savaşı gazisi Tim O’Brien, bu kitabı kendi deneyimlerinden yola çıkarak yazmış. O’Brien, metafiction kullanmış olsa da, güvenilmeyen bir anlatıcı olduğunu ve hikayelerin belki de uydurma olduğunu arada hatırlarsa da ben hepsini gerçekten yaşanmış gibi okudum. Gerçek hikayeler, gerçek anılar, gerçek kişiler, gerçek ölümler ve gerçek yıkımlar. Taşıdıkları Şeyler, bir savaşın o savaşa katılmış bir birey üzerinde hayatı boyunca süren etkilerini müthiş bir gözlem yeteneğiyle gözler önüne seriyor. 19, 20’li yaşlarda savaş hakkında hiçbir fikri olmayan gencecik insanların savaşa çağrıldıklarında nasıl bir anda ölümle tanıştıklarına şahit oluyoruz. Savaşın yükünü omuzlarında taşımak zorunda kalan askerler. Kitabı okurken kulağımda hep Billy Joel’in “Goodnight Saigon” şarkısı çaldı...”They left their childhood, on every acre, and who was wrong?, and who was right?...”
Kitap, roman gibi gözükse de aslında birbiriyle bağlantılı hikayelerden oluşuyor. Hikayeler arasında en sevdiklerim; kitaba adını veren “Taşıdıkları Şeyler” ve “Gerçek Bir Savaş Hikayesi Nasıl Anlatılır” oldu.
Böyle bir kitabın yazılmış olması, bu kitaba konu olanlarım gerçekten yaşanmış olması o kadar acı verici ki. Tıpkı o askerlerin taşıdıkları teçhizatlar ve diğer her şey gibi bizim de bu kitabı elimizde, evimizde taşımamızda bizim için bir yük. Son olarak şunu söylemek istiyorum; gerçek bir savaş hikayesi böyle anlatılır.
“Taşıyabildikleri kadar taşırlardı, fazlasını hatta, taşıdıkları şeylerin korkunç gücüne duyulan sessiz saygı dahil.”

More than a dozen glowing reviews are provided with the novel, none of them do the work justice, so hell if I’m going to achieve eloquence. Everything I want to say is changeable: the work is about the war, but really it’s a love story, the work is about the work - the art of storytelling, how to tell it, what to guess at, what to embellish so that the readers bleed with you, really get it.
The storytelling is, by the Authors own admission, fiction that will better explain truth than the actual truth could, and you believe him. I can only enjoy my incoherence and just say, the work is stellar, it’s very intimate, you should read it.


*re-read

This is an extremely hard review for me to compile, because I am extremely conflicted on my impression of this book. And I think this reflects the very nature of the stories presented to us in The Things They Carried. They are conflicted, true, not true, true, not true. Happening truth, story truth. A maelstrom of fiction and non fiction that sometimes feels raw and poignant and sometimes feels exaggerated and fake.

I gave it 4 stars, and yet sometimes I think it was 3 stars, and then at other times I think was 5 stars. 4 stars, I beleive, is the line in the sand for me.

I feel the only way to review this book is to cut it into positives and negatives.
I trawled through a lot of the reviews here looking for others who felt like I did about the negatives of this book, but whilst there are ample 4 stars and a few less than, no-one tells me why they dropped that star. I will tell you why I dropped mine.
It comes down to fiction and non fiction. I do not like my lines blurred. In war fiction written by a vet I like to feel that it is fiction drawn on life experience. In my Non Fiction, I like to feel that what I am reading is the vets true emotions and experiences without exaggeration or lies.
This book bludgeons both my categories and gives me something that is not quite either. And I hate to say it, but sometimes amidst the authors heart felt truths lies the lurking ugliness of falseness. Of exaggeration and drama created purely because the author had not much of a story to tell.
I feel this book is one long feast of platitudes.

And yet it is also emotionally scarring and based enough on truth to get me where it hurts.
In 'the Nam', in the jungle, there was a platoon of young men. Some of them died, some of them did not. Tim O'Brien did not, and he has tried to do his best to heal and memorialise and I beleive that he has done that to effect.
There are plenty of positives to this book. The writing for one is brilliant at times, the stories for their part are wounding at times.
There is not a doubt in my mind that the combination of O'Brien's writing and his wounding stories will leave every reader in a different state of contemplation in the end. For me, this was a 4 star book, for you it will be a 5 star book, for the rare few it will be 3 or less.

The fact is though, that this book was/is a bestseller and when you look down the list of reviewers here on Goodreads there is one thing that you should notice. It does not matter what your race, your country, your sex or age, your likes or dislikes, your favourite genre of book, this novel has something for everyone and it is being read by all sorts. That, for the memory of our Vietnam Vets, is a very good thing indeed and that, is probably the biggest positive to come out of this book altogether.

One of my favorite books of all time. Period.

Read many times since the 2000s, updated 2024 postscript:

I was a late bloomer in reading this amazing masterpiece of the human spirit. I can say that it lifted me off the ground. I can say it depressed the hell out of me. I can say that some of the stories will stay with me in my heart because so many of his characters are written out of love and longing, yearning and sadness; with the will to survive, without the will to go on.

I think this is one of the greatest short story collections of all time- for me, along with having read Mavis Gallant recently and that of Alice Munro’s Open Secrets- it’s just a gem.

The title story is a masterpiece in timing and arresting imagery, at once setting up the stories of Jimmy Cross, his idealized love for Martha; Tim's bravery, and the setup for the other stories of the men and women to come.

“Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong is the most haunting story in the collection. The story of Mark Fossie and his doomed love for Mary Anne Bell will haunt you forever, especially her harrowing transformation; complete with the image of her wearing a necklace of human tongues.

There’s a gorgeous, 1999 Showtime TV film version called “A Soldier’s Sweetheart” starring Kiefer Sutherland, Georgina Cates as Mary Anne and Skeet Ulrich as Mark that is equally haunting. It’s an underrated gem of a film that deserves to be seen more, especially that this story is probably the most iconic and memorable of the collection.

Or probably the most heartbreaking story is “On the Rainy River”- where Tim O’Brien blurs the lines between fact and fiction, or true storytelling or make-believe. In this story of decision vs indecision- O'Brien learns he is to be drafted, and makes the attempt to cross over to dodge the draft onward to Canada.

“The Man I Killed” is too sad to bear at times, and it just about exhausts me with a sadness that is unbearable and broken.

Stories like "Spin", "Enemies", "Friends"- vignettes about Lee Strunk, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Azar- are all filled with violence and humor at the same time.

"The Lives of the Dead" complete the collection full circle. Tim, haunted by the deaths of his comrades at 43, finally reveals to the reader the story of his first love Linda, diagnosed with a brain tumor, and the attempt to understand the complexities of life and death at aged 9. This is one masterpiece of the 20th century that is fresh every time that it's read, or studied. It's definitely one of my favorites.

The Things They Carried reads like a confession, which, I suppose, in many ways it is. War is a theme in so many books, be they historical fiction, memoirs, alternate histories... and I've certainly read my fair share of them. But stretching my mind back over the years right now, I struggle to recall one that has affected me quite so much. Perhaps I would put it on equal footing with Drakulic's "S" - a heartbreakng novel about the treatment of women in the female war camps during the Bosnian war. But the main difference between the two is that this one is autobiographical. However, unlike a lot of non-fiction I've read, it is also written beautifully, lyrically and powerfully. Telling the horrors, the friendship, the fear and the shame of the Vietnam war with brutal honesty. This is one read that I may never have found without the 1001 book list and it is one I believe fully deserves its place on the list.

The book is split into what some may call short stories but are really all episodes of the same story. A sad story that encompasses the many different aspects of soldier life during the Vietnam war. But it's also about the befores and the afters. How did a young, blood-quesy liberal, who had taken a stand against the war while at university become a soldier who carried out brutal orders and killed without thinking? There is an awfully bleak sadness to this tale that lingers in the very existence of the novel - the fact that O'Brien still finds himself writing war stories long after the war is over. That there are memories and confessions tied up inside him, begging to be told. Despite the stunning prose and vivid re-imagining of these stories, reading The Things They Carried is a little bit like watching someone break down. The author talks at one point how embarrassing confessions are for the people who have to hear them and yet he admits his stories must be told, anyway.

But this also isn't a difficult book. You might expect it to take some effort but O'Brien knows exactly what he's doing as a writer. It's easy to get caught up in the frightening world he is sharing and realise you've read half the book when you only sat down to read a chapter. The stories seemed to fly by in an array of horrifying colour, I was utterly mesmerised from start to finish. And I want to stress something about that: this is not a gratuitous torturefest. Which is perhaps why this story feels so real and powerful. If O'Brien merely wanted to inflict upon us a book that was like a car crash, he could have painted more gory pictures of disemboweled soldiers but the real battle for O'Brien has always been a psychological one. And the things they really carried weren't the ammunition, the pictures and letters from loved ones, or lucky talismans, it was the fear, the guilt and the tremendous loss of innocence.

When it comes to the Vietnam war, things like blame and pity and accusation are thrown all over the place in a million pointing fingers. One minute it's the evil Vietcong setting booby traps to slice up teenage American boys, the next it's evil American soldiers massacring villages and pouring napalm on screaming children. This book is about neither of those. O'Brien sees both US soldiers and Vietcong as young men thrown into something they didn't understand, both victims of a war that was out of control. If anyone gets the blame, it's the highers ups, the politicians and state leaders, people who sit in an office and order teen boys to go out to fight and die. The citizens who shake their heads at the cowardice of a young man who refuses to fight for his country, even when they have no idea why he's fighting.

A surprisingly powerful book that will stay with me for a long time.

I took a short story writing class for kicks a while back. On the first day, the professor recommended two books: Mystery and Manners by Flannery O’Connor and this book by Tim O’Brien. I promptly bought both. Then I just as promptly set them aside to read something flashy.

I am glad I waited until after the class to read this one. Otherwise, I would have quit the class immediately and never written so much as a grocery list ever again. This book is genius. The story about the girl with a necklace of tongues blew my mind. It has been months, and I still think about it. And the guy drowning in a field of poop? It’s hard to forget as well.

Most of the book I wanted to take O’Brien by the shoulders and demand to know exactly what’s true and what’s fabricated. He is a sly fox though. I doubt he would answer if I had him chained upside down and tickled the soles of his feet for days. He addressed this in the book. I cannot remember precisely what he wrote except that it awed and frustrated me in equal amounts.

It was pure frustration yesterday as I reorganized my books. Remember during the Pixar movie, WALL-E, when he is holding the spork and looking left to right. Does it belong with the forks or the spoons? Forks? Spoons? Fiction? Non-fiction?

Darn you, O’Brien.