Tim O'Brien is a local beantown writer, so I automatically like him. This book was intentionally slow at times but was still hard to swallow. I just couldn't relate with the characters. Not a horrible read though.

I found this book while on vacation-someone had left it behind where I was staying, so I picked it up. I'd never read any (nor heard of) Tim O'Brien, and I really like his writing. This is a bit of a "plotless" book--nothing much happens, and at the end I still didn't really understand these characters or their relationships, but that seems to be sort of the point. Clearly the brother Harvey's experience in Vietnam has scarred and changed him, but I think even the brother who stayed home is scarred, not necessarily by Vietnam, but by all the things that can happen in a person's life and back and back in family histories. I think this book was just about that--these things are really hard to recover from and affect people in lasting ways.

This book also gives a great portrayal of what it must really have been like for a young man returning from Vietnam in those days, and now when I see these (now old) men on the street with "Vietnam Vet" scrawled on a cardboard sign, I feel like I have a little more insight into what they must have been through, and possibly why they are on the street. I bet that O'Brien's other books (which also are all framed around the Vietnam war experience) would give me more of that insight.

This book is beautiful and incredibly poetic. Some of it is just sort of bafflingly smooth and simple and plain ass fucking good. my favorite of his books having read if i die in a combat zone box me up and ship me home, and the things they carried

Slow and meandering at times - but the monologues by the different characters were brilliant. I have not read his other novels - yet - and I feel that this one is good enough to hook me in.

While Northern Lights doesn't hold up to the standard that I've become accustomed to with Tim O'Brien novels, it still draws me, like an amorphous, slight sadness dimming everything around it. He does this so well by the cadence of the character's thoughts and words. They skirt around issues, avoiding pinpointing the center for fear of what they might find in that dark place. As Perry and Harvey roam the woods on skis, leaving tracks to no certain end, so does the reader follow O'Brien's acute observation of pain and recovery and coping.

There were moments when I felt the deliberate orchestration behind the scenes, that O'Brien was there contriving a point he wanted to make. This is the only failure of this book, I think. But, being as how it's one of his first, we can instead marvel at far he has come between this and The Things They Carried.

Another book saved by the last third. I struggled with the first 120 pages before I fell into the rhythm of the story. The repetition became less obvious and less obtrusive. I liked Paul’s slow and subtle transformation and struggled with Harvey’s. The ending felt simultaneously sad and hopeful.

O'Brien's first published novel (after the memoir n  If I Die in a Combat Zone Box Me Up and Ship Me Homen), and it shows. You can feel him still finding his stylistic feet here. A good read, but an uneven one, and mostly of interest for how it sets the stage for his later work. (The National Book Award-winning n  Going After Cacciaton would arrive just three years later.)

Tim O'Brien is a favorite of mine. This isn't up to his best efforts, but it's a well written and engaging story about a family's troubles.

The writing style of this book was not for me. I didn't finish it.

It was as though nothing had changed or ever would change, and partly she was right. In the winter, in the blizzard, there had been no sudden revelation, and things were the same, no epiphany or sudden shining of light to awaken and comfort and make happy, and things were the same, the old man was still down there alive in his grave, frozen and not dead, and in the house the cold was always there, except for patience and Grace and the pond, which were the same, everything the same. Harvey was quiet. Like twin oxen struggling in different directions against the same old yoke, they could not talk, for there was only the long history: the town, the place, the forest and religion, partly a combination of human beings and events, partly a genetic fix, an alchemy of circumstance.

That's how I felt once I finished reading this debut novel by Tim O'Brien: like the characters didn't--and couldn't--change, like the war one fought in and the same war the other didn't fight in stymied their ability to experience happiness and growth. Or maybe they could feel happy and grow if they were to share their thoughts and feelings, as if just releasing the words into the universe would free them. But alas, they couldn't, they would rather die than say such things aloud.

One way this book impressed me was how quickly it could shift the mood, because just three pages earlier I lost a tear after reading this:

He did not talk about the long days of being lost. The same way he never talked about the war, or how he lost his eye, or other bad things. He would not talk about it. “Yes, we’ll go to Nassau,” he would say instead. “Where it’s warm. By God, we’ll have us a lovely time, won’t we? Buy a sailboat and sail the islands, see the sights, sleep at night on the beaches. Doesn’t it sound great?”

That passage led me to consider that I'd allowed myself to forget that many years ago I endured near-death treatment in order to prevent certain death from illness. And if I did allow myself to forget that, then I thus deprived myself of fully being alive. And if I deprived myself of fully being alive, then I must now fully awaken--at least, this is what I thought immediately after tearing--I must put the book down and drive to go hang with my girlfriend, because that would be the most lively thing I could do.

...But then just three pages later, I read the first passage above, and realized that just living for the rush of liveliness the way Harvey was living during the time of that second passage was really just a way to stay stuck, to not grow, to not seek real happiness. And then I continued reading to the end, and now I feel entirely content writing this review on a Friday night.

My, how fleeting thoughts and feelings can be; my, the power of stories.

I didn't get it. I read the book from cover to cover because I hate to put a book down, but I didn't get Mr. O'Brien's message...strange story.

Not the best book that I have read from O'Brien. There is very little actual plot action (except during the ski trek and that becomes repetitive) but rather "mental" action. Other parts were confusing. I couldn't find any of the characters likeable. I finished the book but that is about all I can say about it.