Angst is so last decade.

2015

94

I've always found a coldness at the heart of most O'Brien novels--something slightly detached, almost a little psychotic--but this one felt positively frigid. To a certain extent that's justified: this is, after all, a book about a kind of psychosis.* And O'Brien's prose is as beautiful as ever. But there was something about this book that unnerved me, and not in the good way. An absorbing read, but not an enjoyable one.

*See n  In the Lake of the Woodsn for an example of where this is used to better effect; see n  July Julyn, by contrast, for what I think is O'Brien at his warmest.

An early Tim O'Brien, this book still resonates with his themes of war, conscience, and hope.

A random discovery in my local library when I was 15 years old. Some books fall into your life, you connect with them, they leave a mark. I haven't read it again since and I do not own it. Now aged 42 I feel a longing to return to it and perhaps understand why it was such a special book to me back then.

This book was SO good. It's nothing like The Things They Carried, really, but it's an incredible look at what the threat of Nuclear War, and the lingering effects of the Vietnam War do to people. Beautifully written, great and weird characters. Loved it.

I read 'The Things They Carried' after Pete Baumann recommended it to me, and was totally blown away. This is better.

I could not finish this book and I normally love Tim O'Brien's writing. I think another reviewer said it best: "ceaseless." This story just hammers away at you ceaselessly. The dialog doesn't work. The effort to establish the narrator as crazy goes overboard. It's just too much. I think this is one of O'Brien's first and I can say with certainty that he improved in later books. O'Brien tries too hard to deal with too many subjects at once, here.

Merged review:

I could not finish this book and I normally love Tim O'Brien's writing. I think another reviewer said it best: "ceaseless." This story just hammers away at you ceaselessly. The dialog doesn't work. The effort to establish the narrator as crazy goes overboard. It's just too much. I think this is one of O'Brien's first and I can say with certainty that he improved in later books. O'Brien tries too hard to deal with too many subjects at once, here.

This book was a random pull off the Border's shelf and it turned out to be a pretty good pick. At first I didn't think I would like it because the story seemed like it wasn't going to go anywhere. The first chapter starts out in present time and the main character is digging a hole in his backyard to protect his family from imminent nuclear war -- he is pretty crazy. Most of the novel is a recount of his life after he dodged the draft with his buddies and fellow “terrorists”. One of his buddies is a girl that fawns over him through the whole book, which is a frustrating story line in itself. The most interesting part of the book for me was the present day time period where he digs this huge hole while his wife and daughter think he is insane – he does some seriously crazy things that had me very interested.

a Difficult Read

Similar to the ode of a madman! You need the proper frame of mind to read this or fall into abyss with the protagonist. A book not for the feint of heart, but the brave and assured.

There’s still a part of me that wants to close out Tim O’Brien’s catalog. There was once a part of me that REALLY wanted to. Like a lot of people I read The Things They Carried when I was young (about 20) and thought it was amazing. I still do. Then I read If I Die in a Combat Zone and Going After Cacciato and thought they were amazing. I still do. In the Lake of the Woods? It’s really good! Tomcat in Love? Oh no! And it fell off from there. I came down from the high and realized, like most writers, he’s got good and bad. And worst of all, he’s got mediocre. This book is mediocre. It attempts to capture some really interesting big ideas from post-Vietnam America and does to some extent, but at the same time, it falters in even more important ways. We begin with a man about to turn 50 digging a hole in his yard as a way to channel his paranoia about nuclear war and the 1960s into something seemingly productive. It’s 1995 for the record, though the book was written in 1985. This puts strain on his wife and family, and as those ties begins to unravel a little, he tells us about his brushes with radical past in college in the 1960s and beyond.

As the story unfolds, we find out that he was part of a Weather Underground kind of organization, got super close to terrorism and revolution, and then sold out or checked out. It has the issue a lot of books have when they talk about the 1960s in that it’s chock full of “THE SIXTIES” references that bloat what might be interesting ideas otherwise. Worse, it’s just not a very interesting novel.