Reviews - The Things They Carried

3.97k reviews for:

The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien

4.12 AVERAGE

amgdensmore's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful informative reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

chloe249's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

madsblackk's review against another edition

4.25

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

echappus's review against another edition

4.75

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Wonderfully written, incredibly engaging. Doesn't try to sugarcoat the horror of war, but isn't gratuitously violent either. A beautiful and haunting narrative of the Vietnam War.

chels_ro's review against another edition

4.75

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

violiclolic's review against another edition

5.0

I looooved this book

lmyers's review against another edition

4.0

Slim, beautifully written Viet Nam war stories based on true events.

marshing_through_woods's review against another edition

5.0

Okay it was really good. And maybe bc I read it for school it was even better bc the whole time I was thinking about parallels and themes and metaphors. Ugh the writing was really good. At some points it was like a collection of individual personal stories or stories about the other soldiers and then at other points it looked at the pre or post war or at the whole war objectively. The changing of perspective made you get a really comprehensive vision and feel of the whole thing. And Tim even acknowledges that and says things like “that story was made up but it doesn’t matter bc I want u to feel what I felt.” It was tragically beautiful and maddeningly sad.

thimea's review against another edition

4.75

dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

jcoker10's review against another edition

5.0

Breathtaking—everything a story should be. “Speaking of Courage” is about as perfect of a piece of fiction that I’ve ever read.

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