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abaugher's review against another edition
4.0
short but poignant, as McCormicks's book always are. This one shares the confusion, fear, and anger of soldiers, the deliberate blindness of military personnel in order to avoid an even bigger mess, and the sense of betrayal and guilt American soldiers must feel when they end up mistrusting and even killing the very people they came to protect.
k_wall's review against another edition
3.0
Private Matt Duffy is 18 years old and in Iraq fighting for his country. We find him in an army hospital with a head injury, and he has received the Purple Heart for his actions the day he was injured. Matt just doesn't feel like he is a hero and he has trouble remembering what happened, but he feels terrible about an Iraqi kid who was in the middle of it. He finally gets to go back into the action with his squad and he is haunted by what he does remember.
I really liked how this book started out the story, and I felt like it was a good way to show life in a war zone. The story really developed the characters in the hospital, and it showed how Matt was really trying to get passed his brain injury and get back to active duty. As the story progressed, I wish we could have known more about Matt's background and his family back home. I also felt like some of the other people at the hospital were to developed because they really didn't add a ton to the story line. I also felt like Meaghan Finnerty was going to play a bigger role in Matt's life, but again once her help wasn't needed she was just yanked from the story and never heard from again.
When Matt gets to go back to his squad, I felt like the story was going along great and we see that he is nervous to be back in the combat zone. Then all of a sudden there is one battle scene and the book is over. We do finally learn what happened on that awful day that Matt was injured, but this book left me wanting more.
I really liked how this book started out the story, and I felt like it was a good way to show life in a war zone. The story really developed the characters in the hospital, and it showed how Matt was really trying to get passed his brain injury and get back to active duty. As the story progressed, I wish we could have known more about Matt's background and his family back home. I also felt like some of the other people at the hospital were to developed because they really didn't add a ton to the story line. I also felt like Meaghan Finnerty was going to play a bigger role in Matt's life, but again once her help wasn't needed she was just yanked from the story and never heard from again.
When Matt gets to go back to his squad, I felt like the story was going along great and we see that he is nervous to be back in the combat zone. Then all of a sudden there is one battle scene and the book is over. We do finally learn what happened on that awful day that Matt was injured, but this book left me wanting more.
jwinchell's review against another edition
3.0
This is on the 2014 Abe list.
I struggle with Patricia McCormick... I absolutely loathed Never Fall Down; it felt appropriated, colonialist. With Purple Heart, once again she's done a lot of research and seems to have immersed herself in interviews with Iraq war vets and family members. She used the 3rd person to flesh out Matt's story of surviving an RPG with traumatic brain injury and his return to the front. And even though I was intrigued by Matt's story and horrified by the deeply layered "don't ask, don't tell" culture of the U.S. military, something about this entire book rang hollow. It felt journalistic. The moment she has Matt use the phrase "goofing off" to describe how he and his squad hang out, I thought: yep, this is a middle aged woman here. As we would say in YA class, there was way too much annoying "authorial intrusion."
That said, McCormick takes on an important issues that are relevant for today's teens: the ongoing war in Iraq, the draw of military service, young vets returning home and being sent back out to the front with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress.
Young readers will be swept up in the mystery of what happened to Matt, to the little boy, with his friend Justin. We regain memory as Matt does--somewhat ok storytelling.
And now I'm going prioritize reading The Yellow Birds, National Book Award finalist, written by a veteran of the Iraq War. I think I value authenticity over research.
I struggle with Patricia McCormick... I absolutely loathed Never Fall Down; it felt appropriated, colonialist. With Purple Heart, once again she's done a lot of research and seems to have immersed herself in interviews with Iraq war vets and family members. She used the 3rd person to flesh out Matt's story of surviving an RPG with traumatic brain injury and his return to the front. And even though I was intrigued by Matt's story and horrified by the deeply layered "don't ask, don't tell" culture of the U.S. military, something about this entire book rang hollow. It felt journalistic. The moment she has Matt use the phrase "goofing off" to describe how he and his squad hang out, I thought: yep, this is a middle aged woman here. As we would say in YA class, there was way too much annoying "authorial intrusion."
That said, McCormick takes on an important issues that are relevant for today's teens: the ongoing war in Iraq, the draw of military service, young vets returning home and being sent back out to the front with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress.
Young readers will be swept up in the mystery of what happened to Matt, to the little boy, with his friend Justin. We regain memory as Matt does--somewhat ok storytelling.
And now I'm going prioritize reading The Yellow Birds, National Book Award finalist, written by a veteran of the Iraq War. I think I value authenticity over research.
laura_m_j's review against another edition
4.0
Good addition to the SCYABA list. It should inspire thoughtful essays and discussions about war and Iraq and camaraderie. Books about war are always so tragic because of the loss of life and the toll the experiences take on the individuals who survive. War is a huge part of our world, though, and experiencing it through literature is at least one way to understand the conflicts.
The author did a good job with her research into the minds of the American soldiers. She was neither for or against war but presented the violence and death and mortality from a very human perspective. The Iraqi people were presented as "them" and as "those people," but the story was not intended to get inside the heads of the Iraqis. Leave that for another, longer, book.
The author did a good job with her research into the minds of the American soldiers. She was neither for or against war but presented the violence and death and mortality from a very human perspective. The Iraqi people were presented as "them" and as "those people," but the story was not intended to get inside the heads of the Iraqis. Leave that for another, longer, book.
jdintr's review against another edition
3.0
I read this story at the same time I listened to Kevin Powers's The Yellow Birds, and it suffered in comparison.
What's at the center of this novel isn't a battle, per se, but the murder of a young, Iraqi boy, an image the McCormick returns to again and again throughout the novel. As details of the murder slowly filter back into the concussed mind of private Matt Duffy, the broader picture of this war becomes fleshed out for the reader.
Matt is the last person to really give up on the dead boy. The commanders in the Green Zone have a falsified version of the attack that they expect Matt to rubber-stamp. Matt's colleague, Justin--the only other witness of the murder--refuses to offer the slightest shred of evidence. Matt's sergeant seems to be on constant look-out for excuses to look the other way instead of punishing insubordination in his unit.
The closest anyone in this book comes to making a value judgement about the murdered boy is in an aborted letter that Matt writers to his high-school-aged girlfriend back home:
This book is a fascinating introduction to the 21st-century American warrior for young readers. I wouldn't recommend it as a source on the Iraq War because the scenes of war are so very limited (urban patrols, a suicide bomb attack). While the scenes of war are more detailed in The Yellow Birds, both books share a disinterest in the reasons for the war and the overall scope of the characters' respective missions.
Of course, these books share a hyper-focus on the individual soldier and an ignorance about the war in general with the American public and the nation's leaders who launched the war and waged it so tragically. THAT book has yet to be written. I only pray that it can be before a future president starts rattling sabers for the next "pre-emptive war."
What's at the center of this novel isn't a battle, per se, but the murder of a young, Iraqi boy, an image the McCormick returns to again and again throughout the novel. As details of the murder slowly filter back into the concussed mind of private Matt Duffy, the broader picture of this war becomes fleshed out for the reader.
Matt is the last person to really give up on the dead boy. The commanders in the Green Zone have a falsified version of the attack that they expect Matt to rubber-stamp. Matt's colleague, Justin--the only other witness of the murder--refuses to offer the slightest shred of evidence. Matt's sergeant seems to be on constant look-out for excuses to look the other way instead of punishing insubordination in his unit.
The closest anyone in this book comes to making a value judgement about the murdered boy is in an aborted letter that Matt writers to his high-school-aged girlfriend back home:
This is a strange place. You think there are rules and there's right and wrong and you think officers are all assholes who only want to make your life miserable. And then you find out that everybody has a different idea of what's right and wrong. And that a lot of people act like they want to know what's going on but that they really don't--because then they might have to do something about it. Like I said, it's strange.
This book is a fascinating introduction to the 21st-century American warrior for young readers. I wouldn't recommend it as a source on the Iraq War because the scenes of war are so very limited (urban patrols, a suicide bomb attack). While the scenes of war are more detailed in The Yellow Birds, both books share a disinterest in the reasons for the war and the overall scope of the characters' respective missions.
Of course, these books share a hyper-focus on the individual soldier and an ignorance about the war in general with the American public and the nation's leaders who launched the war and waged it so tragically. THAT book has yet to be written. I only pray that it can be before a future president starts rattling sabers for the next "pre-emptive war."
readwithpassion's review against another edition
4.0
Matt Duffy wakes up with a brain injury in the middle of Iraq and he can't remember what happened that put him in the hospital. This is a fantastic book. Patricia McCormick does it again!
robdabear's review against another edition
4.0
Although I just picked this book up randomly at the library, I turned out to really like it. Purple Heart was almost like a good, short mystery set in the center of a war zone in current-day Iraq. The main character, Matt Duffy, a deployed soldier, wakes up in a military hospital. I will only elaborate by saying after his awakening, a mystery unfolds while still pointing out details of an Iraqi war-zone.
By reading the acknowledgements at the end, I truly believe the author (Patricia McCormick) went all-out to make this book as detailed and realistic as possible, by enlisting the help of real soldiers in Iraq, who, in her words, "Questioned and challenged my story to make it as realistic as possible."
The only dislike I had with this story was it's length. A relatively thin book, I finished it in about three days. The only time I would read it would be during breakfast or lunch, which would last about thirty minutes maybe. The book just seemed to be going by really fast.
But that one con isn't enought to outweigh my view, so in conclusion, I really enjoyed this short, fast story.
By reading the acknowledgements at the end, I truly believe the author (Patricia McCormick) went all-out to make this book as detailed and realistic as possible, by enlisting the help of real soldiers in Iraq, who, in her words, "Questioned and challenged my story to make it as realistic as possible."
The only dislike I had with this story was it's length. A relatively thin book, I finished it in about three days. The only time I would read it would be during breakfast or lunch, which would last about thirty minutes maybe. The book just seemed to be going by really fast.
But that one con isn't enought to outweigh my view, so in conclusion, I really enjoyed this short, fast story.
reagandrury's review against another edition
2.0
Not sure how to feel about it. It was intriguing but didn't stick with me.
annebennett1957's review against another edition
4.0
Several boys actually gushed about this book and how much they liked it. Always on the look-out for "boy" books I will add it to my list of one to recommend.
My review: https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com/2010/07/summer-reading-underway.html
My review: https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com/2010/07/summer-reading-underway.html
msethna's review against another edition
4.0
This book is on our summer reading list and I thought it reminded me of the memoir, Ghosts of War so I picked it up to read. The plot is simple. Matt Duffy is in the military in Iraq fighting for our country when something happens and he ends up in the hospital. He loses his memory and little by little the truth of what actually happened. Overall, a good quick read. If you like this, I highly recommend Ghosts of War as well!