Life’s too short to read bad books.
Isn’t the internet a wonderful tool? Punch that quote into Google and
you find it attributed to numerous writers (Ernest Hemmingway, Michael Crichton
– wtf? – Gerhart Hauptmann and more), maybe one day it will be attributed to
me.
I started this blog back in July last year and since that
time I have reviewed every book I have read and was proud to say that I had
finished all 36 of them. That was until now. Even before I opened this tome I
was a little daunted, another Vietnam story, over 700 pages, “Epic
International Bestseller” sticker on the cover, a format in the style of those revolving book stands in airport
newsagents (ie. Something to read whilst you’re bored out of your wits for 24
hours and something you won’t mind leaving in the back of the seat in front
when you’re done). Not that I’m at all swayed by such things…..
Well I was in for a shock - "International Bestseller" doesn't mean much to me, as we know Dan Brown sells millions - this is tedious hard work. I did receive a chuckle the other
day from a work colleague when I described this as “Dickens does Vietnam”:
By the next morning a full storm
was hurling itself against the hill. The platoon moved in slow motion all day, buffeted
by the wind, hampered by cold hands that made grasping E-tools and knives even
more difficult than normal. It seemed cruelly unnecessary to Mellas to have to
return to the backbreaking work of digging and chopping just when they had
reached the point where they could start working on their own living quarters.
Yet they dug and chopped, finding meaning of their actions within the small
prosaic tasks, casting from their minds the larger questions that would only
lead them to despair.
Please!!! Numerous characters who can’t even remember each
other (so how am I meant to?), let alone care for each other (how am I meant
to?), long drawn out passages that actually say little and a plot which tells
me war is futile and higher ranked military staff don’t know what they’re
doing. Thanks for that – I don’t need 700 pages of it.
Written in vivid detail (there is a 34 page glossary) by a
Rhodes scholar who was a highly decorated ex-Marine, this is not your average war story.
It is also not your average literary novel (hence my issues). The part that I
got through dealt mainly with a character called Mellas (who I assume will die
or else why the futility of it all) who is not really cut out to lead his
hardened, racist, disenchanted men…..sound a bit like a few Vietnam war movies
you’ve seen? Well you could watch “Full Metal Jacket” followed by “The Thin Red
Line” back to back in less than five hours, and you’d still be only 20% of your
way through this novel in the same time.
I admit my comments may be considered a tad harsh, however I got to the
point where I hadn’t read a page for over three days as I wasn’t enjoying it –
that’s when I decided to put this down and finally said “no more” – good grief,
I was only 151 pages in. There’s nothing offensive about this novel, it’s not
badly written and the settings are real, the horrors and monotony of war even
more so – but to be honest, it is just not my cup of tea.
If this wins the IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize for 2012 I will
go back and finish it, otherwise it will sit on my shelf gathering dust and end
up for sale by my kids on some e-bay style site long after my demise.
I’ll be posting a review of Tim Pears’ “Landed” in the coming
days as I finished that one yesterday, sorry for the delay in reviews, it just
took me a while to get this one onto a page…..
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