Tim O'Brien has done better.

This is an entertaining and thoughtful book, in spite of all the clunkier shifts in the plot. I like Melanie 13 she 19s a very believable 12-year-old, willing and capable of calling her Dad the loony that he is. And I can sympathize with Dad as the paranoid protagonist. It 19s both sensible and sad to witness his breakdown as he struggles to protect his loved ones against the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Then again, I 19m not so keen about the 1Clisten to the hole 1D soliloquies. And Mom is a persistent drag, a caricature femme fatale.

The further the plot moves away from the family core, the more contrived it feels. The Cold War leftist guerrilla tangent fits perfectly into Dad 19s world view, but it 19s much less successful as a believable outgrowth of his particular experiences.

Sally the unattainable cheerleader turned Patty Hearst is an annoying wrench in his Brave Bungled New World. And really, a nuclear warhead makes its way from the Florida guerrilla hideout to Dad 19s Montana toolshed?

Oh well, pigheaded determination in the face of disbelief is a core value of paranoia, and this book is credible enough on that count.

Why oh why did I force myself to finish this book? There was almost nothing I liked about it and yet I stuck with it to the bitter end.

Not my cup of tea; hung in there to finish out of curiosity and the ending was definitely not worth it. Have much respect for Tim O'Brien and other books of his, though.

Though it is difficult to match the realism and power of "The Things They Carried", O'Brien does succeed in painting a honest psychological painting of a man trapped in an era obsessed with nuclear holocaust.

Not my favorite, while the type of people the book is satirizing deserve to get skewered its hard to like the characters. All of the characters are hypocritical which is true to life because who isn't at least a little bit, but its part of what makes them hard to like. I could respect idealism if there's something behind it, but motivations are muddled for the characters in this book.

Strange.

Tim O’Brien is a polarizing author. The Things They Carried is often cited as the source of his greatest societal disturbance; a fictionalized account of his experiences in Vietnam billed on publication as non-fiction. But also because he’s a hot and cold author, with some books are outstanding and others receiving lukewarm reception.

But personally, TTTC is my single favorite book ever. I’ve read it at least 6 times. I remember being assigned a copy in my high school English class and was so deeply in love that I never gave it back. If you could truly love a book, I loved this book. Chapters left me struggling to breath or painfully heartbroken, or mind blown as words could give to me empathy and emotions I couldn’t describe myself in situations I could never imagine alone. Explosions, lights, sounds, truth; all documented with black ink on white paper.

I swore to never picked up another O’Brien book, just in case the illusion would be shattered. But like a junkie that can’t resist whispered temptations, I see Nuclear Plan in a half- off bin on at the Strand pop up in Times Square. And I’m about to go on vacation. So clearly, I was destined for disaster. Buy me it whispered. Read me! It demanded. You love this author it persuaded.

I caved in.

This book is a solid 3.7 It’s a 4.3 in idea but it’s a 3 low, 2 high in execution. There are some parts that are very moving (That therapist scene is genius), but just overall, for what had such high expectations, it was merely good.

Instead of just picking it apart, I’d like to focus on one of the theses; what is the proper response to a Damocles sword?

In the book, the narrator is plagued by the fear of nuclear annihilation. It begins with his childhood self building a bunker under a ping pong table, lined with pencils [as a lead shield]. It’s almost cute. But in adulthood, the fear manifests itself as an uglier foe, driving him to dig a huge hole in his backyard. Plans for an entire living structure feed his imagination. Back breaking labor gives him nothing more than a deep pit and kidnapping his own wife and child, as he keeps reminiscing and suffering a mental breakdown.

All the while, the hole demands of him; Dig! Dig deeper! That the only sane response is to build a bomb shelter. That the entire rest of the world is filled with idiots, unaware of the impending doom that is housed in missile silos across the country. Fallible, frantic, flawed humans could incinerate everything we know, with flash and a bang. That we’ve teetered at that ending, only dumb luck keeping us from falling into the abyss. Proliferation? Cuban Missile Crisis? Broken Arrows? Terrorists? Unstable world leaders?

O’Brien’s goal, echoing the therapist’s procedure, is to reverse roles, by making the narrator so crazy and self-doubtful that the audience reverses its position, instead supplying the argument for the narrator’s sanity. This sort of culminates in the Committee actually possessing a nuke and storing it in his shed. Sarah casually describing how they could have built their own bomb because plans are near universally accessible but stealing it made a point about proliferation is just so terrifyingly true I want to start digging myself.

This naturally leads to the actual question; is it insane to ignore the looming threat of nuclear war?

Shades of grey, as is everything. I agree with the narrator eventually standing down, valuing his daughter and her future over the impending doom. We still have lives to live, and it cannot be overwhelmed by this threat.

But the threat is real. Nuclear war. It’s diminished from the heights of probability, but this isn’t some ignorable issue. It’s a present danger that is not only catastrophic but potentially species ending. And we should take steps to prevent having it be in our future. We should be aware of the actions that we are individually taking and as a society that will affect the possibility of nuclear war or climate change, and weight them with the proper respect. Some of the leaders are unpredictable to say the least. Tensions between countries like India and Pakistan or Israel and their entire neighborhood aren’t mentioned in America [can we even look away from the Orange?] but pose a real threat to nuclear deterrence as a solution. And then terrorism! That’s something everyone on this hemisphere takes seriously. Though O’Brien, purposefully or not, makes the Committee domestic terrorists; more IRA or the United Freedom Front than FARC or Boko Haram.

I don’t want to come off as some crazy or alarmist junkie. In some respects that is the opposite approach of O’Brien’s character, who goes so far off the deep end, it drives you to meet him halfway. And I see the faults when trying to take a measured tone in discussing an overwhelming idea. It’s hard for brains to grasp ideas of scale. And when the way we’ve evolved to process information doesn’t work, we fail to grasp the entire situation. It’s why Galileo was excommunicated. It’s why it was Robert’s Folly, not his Triumph or his Vision. It’s why we think Elon Musk is a freaking alien.

Or why anyone anywhere would advocate “nuking the shit” out of someone or something.

[BTW That’s never the right answer. But if it is yours: Good News! You’re an uneducated moron*. *With the same flaw any animalistic/logarithm brain would apply to initially analyze that situation.]

I guess in the end I don’t really fault O’Brien for not delivering on a follow up to The Things They Carried in Nuclear Age. My brain isn’t good at formulating opinion when my love for TTTC just out scales objectivity. And I can see why O’Brien himself had difficultly explaining a weapon so devastating it levels all rationality [and literally anything else in its path. Anywhere. From suborbital space. Flying 7m/s.] But he does a pretty decent job at it. And if you’re a fan of that Vonnegut-esque narrator, I would give it a shot.

3.78/5.00 Slight bias in his favor. Great idea, reasonable execution. Entertaining if you’re a fan of the style.

Disappointing from a huge Tim O'Brien fan. Didn't hold together, would have been better as a series of short stories.

Best first 50 pages of any book I've ever read...laughed out loud the whole time...there was nowhere to go but down, but even the slide was fun.

As well-written as any of Tim O'Brien's works, except this one had a subversive undertone that shook me as the reader. I was a little undone by the relationships between the characters, especially between the narrator and the two principal female characters. The premise was surprisingly imaginative, but the neurotic tendencies of the main character, especially in the interactions with the hole in his back yard and the childhood telephone calls, kind of weirded me out. The story also seemed a little unfinished. I am glad to have read it, but I will never read it again.

Tim O'Brien explores the inner thoughts of someone confronting the dawn of the nuclear age. Interesting, but not my favorite O'Brien book (possibly my least favorite - I definitely loved The Things They Carried, enjoyed Going After Cacciato, also enjoyed In the Lake Of the Woods). Maybe I've read too many O'Brien novels and don't find them as interesting now.