Lovely Little Shelf

The Book: The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien

The Story: In the course of the book, Tim O’Brien says several times that the “truth” of things that happened in Vietnam and the “stories” that people tell, while they may contradict, are both still true.  On the first page of this book, he calls it a work of fiction although it feels very autobiographical from the get-go.  All this to say that the truth and the fiction are hard to tell apart.

This is the story of these guys who all belong to the same company and are in Vietnam during the Vietnam war.  A lot of the book is told in past tense, these older guys looking back on what happened when they were eighteen years old.  They develop a real bond for each other- a real love- because they are all each other has for the time being.  They know pretty much everything about each other and help each other cope with the crazy stuff that’s happening in front of them every day.

The title of the book comes from the “story” (the book is almost set up in short story format, but not quite) at the very start of the book.  The author describes what is normal for the guys to carry in their bags and how much everything weighs.  Then he goes further to talk about how they are all carrying aggression, love, memories, and so on.  This is a powerful piece that makes the characters in the book just seem incredibly human and incredibly young.

What I Thought: I think that so often the Vietnam war gets overlooked.  We never learned about it in school.  For every hundred books written about WWII, there is probably one book written on Vietnam.  I’d never read one that I can remember.  All that to say, I went into this mostly blind.  What little I knew was mostly from the couple movies made about this time (I’m lookin’ at you, Forest Gump) and just little tidbits I’d picked up here and there.  My husband, who was a big military history geek for awhile, helped me through this one and answered about 7,000 questions for me.

I had been wanting to read this because I heard that it was powerful and important.  I hadn’t heard that it was written beautifully.  I wasn’t expecting the tenderness that came through.  A tender war book? Huh? It was amazing. The part where he takes his young daughter back to these places where he had seen friends die, where he had camped in the mud, that touched me deep down.

I do have to say, about 3/4ths of the way through, I started kind of zoning.  Everything started to sound pretty much the same and I had to take a break to avoid just skimming.  I was glad that I did because this part of the book wasn’t any less powerful, it was just a lot to take at once.  Even though this is a shorter book, it isn’t really a quick read.  I mean, I suppose you could read it quickly but I really don’t think you’d get as much out of it.

Conclusion: For people who lived through the Vietnam War, I know that this would be touching, but even for people who weren’t born yet this is a powerful and moving look at the US’s history.