"Going After Cacciato"—a strong and convincing novel that deserves its recent National Book Award—goes well beyond mere disillusionment about war and national policy. It is a book about the imagination itself, one which both questions and celebrates that faculty’s way of resisting the destructive powers of immediate experience.

That comes from The New York Review of Books' review of this, and I needed this and other reviews to understand Going After Cacciato. I think this book goes above my head--I get concepts like unreliable narrators and dream sequences, but I don't recall having read what I thought was, and what I think sorta maybe is, a literary novel that just happens to also be fantastical magical realism. And I think my not-yet-readerly-enough brain couldn't hold that truth as I read this, which led me to lose focus because the story is not plausible; it's a giant metaphor for our awareness escaping reality when reality is too horrific.

Cacciato is leaving the Vietnam War and walking to Paris? And I fall for it? Brilliant.

One of my all-time favorite novels! Mesmerizing.

One routinely violent afternoon in Vietnam, private Cacciato, a boy soldier who is as "dumb as a month-old oyster fart," sheds his gear and decides to leave the war: 8600 miles from the Quang Ngai province to "gay Paree," to be exact (4-5). So follow our heroes (?), the Third Squad, First Platoon, Alpha Company, First Battalion of the 46th Infantry, charged with catching the AWOL soldier/white whale.

Their hunt first leads them through the jungle, terrain that Specialist Fourth Class Paul Berlin knows "the way a hunter knows his favorite forest, or the way a farmer knows his own acreage" (250). In fact, the battalion's sense of direction is so keen that they are able to track Cacciato through India, Iran, Greece, and eventually, Paris. No need to worry, readers: "Money was never a problem, passports were never required" (124).

Interspersed with the "real" horrors of war (a by-the-book lieutenant who sends his men to their death by making them search tunnels before destroying them; washing what remains of a fallen GI's face out of his own helmet), O'Brien takes the reader on an incredible journey--or is it an escape?--that ranges from the tunnels of the Ho Chi Minh trail to the plains of Anatolia and the islands of Greece. The soldiers pursue Cacciato relentlessly, for he is duty. He is home. He is God. He is escape. He is peace.

The more I learn about the veterans in my own family, and the more I read about war (thankfully, this is the closest I will ever come to it), the more tragic and unknowable it becomes to me. Like his later masterpiece, The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato is a glimpse into the mind of a soldier--a soldier who "lives not only amid the realities of bombs and bullets, but . . . also in the lurid landscape of his own imagination." How could he not? How can a soldier survive the horrors of war other than to retreat into dreams of patriotism, survival, love, and, above all, peace? The politicians and we, the public, pragmatic and aggressive from the safety of our armchairs, should be forced into O'Brien's landscapes before sending young men and women to the slaughter. After all, "we cannot say no to slaughter if we cannot imagine saying no to slaughter" (338).

Mechanically it's a pretty clever novel, but it doesn't hold a candle to The Things They Carried. That doesn't mean that it's bad, but I think that if you only want to read one Tim O'Brien book, you're better off with that one over Going After Cacciato. That said, it has its own dreamy kind of charm. Not bad, but not excellent either.

In the late spring of 2020, the pandemic was starting to rock and roll, and a relative of mine needed help. Flying wasn't on the menu at that point, and I wanted to stay away from other people, so I drove cross-country on a solo camping trip from the West Coast to the Midwest. I read this book while I drove eastward. Reading this after "The Things They Carried" seemed to fit--each of those books has its own flavor, but I got sucked into both of them; I'd highly recommend this, and it was a great book to read while on an unusual journey.

What Going After Cacciato set out to do, it did very well. But as a matter of personal preference, I think military fiction just isn’t for me. The dual narratives, the one set in reality and the one in Paul’s imagination, the constant jumping back and forth between them, the scattered, almost ethereal (for lack of a better word) nature of it all, served to emphasize the insensibility and moral questions of war and how these soldiers found their own ways of coping with all the horrors. But I do not like guessing at what is going on until the end of the novel and I prefer more clarity in my books. Tim O’Brien is still an excellent writer though, and this book is excellently written, and I really admire his skills.

A powerful Vietnam war novel, maybe the best one ever written -- certainly in the top three.

Tim O’brien loses you again in the personal chaos of the Vietnam war.

Although Going After Cacciato is a surreal counterpoint to The Things They Carried, it is every bit as eye-opening, visceral, and powerful as that masterwork. And O'Brien can really really write! This is definitely a book I want to reread and study a little more closely. (Some stunning chapters throughout.)

There are two narratives in this novel, one a trippy road novel laced with magical realism and one a gritty look (through flashbacks) at aspects of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. It all ends in an ambiguous ending that leaves the reader's head, already spun so many times over, spinning. It all actually, completely works.

Tim O’Brien is one of my favorite writers and this book is a classic. Part real, part fantasy, O’Brien shows you what he wants you to see and let’s the reader figure out what happened. Highly recommend this book and The Things They Carried to anyone interested in learning about the Vietnam war from an infantryman’s unglamorous perspective on the ground.

(5.0)

I wasn’t ready for the magnitude, complexity and depth of this book. At times the surreal nature and poetic narration made the book hard to follow and grasp. There seemed to be hazy moments and gaps and events didn’t always make sense… but I think that’s a partial point.

If you want to read this book in an interest to hear war stories, see action and fighting, then you’d be mostly satisfied, maybe a little underwhelmed. But if you pick this up and enter into it as you would a classic that’s big and bulky in theme and rich with meaning all set within a war torn setting - then you’d be blown away.

For whatever reason, I often view storytelling in terms of knit work. The more storylines and threads you add, the more themes and meaning you incorporate, the higher the chance for mishaps and tangles but also the possibility of a complex and beautiful work of art. This is an awesome and intricately woven tale dealing with real and impactful issues.

Tim o Brien is a master storyteller and this book is worthy of book studies and college discourses and papers and all that good stuff that is the result of a masterpiece worthy of reflection and interpretation.