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A review by kochella
Redeployment by Phil Klay
5.0
I'm not gonna lie, I started and stopped this book three times before I got past the first story. Hell, the first three sentences:
"We shot dogs. Not by accident. We did it on purpose, and we called it Operation Scooby."
I would stop there and think, "Really? You have to do it this way, Klay? You have to shove it in my face like Hollywood, when I'm trying to understand?"
I left the book sitting on my bedside table. It was a library book, so it became due. I returned it, unread.
About a month later I checked it out again because I felt compelled. Like it was my duty as a citizen leading a typically plump, clueless, suburban life to get past my (let's be honest) petty discomfort and spend some time with this book and what it had to say.
I am so glad I did. What I couldn't get past in those first three sentences was precisely what so many of the short stories in this collection depicted so skillfully - the spiritual and emotional maelstrom that our Marines and soldiers were thrown into when they served in the moral void that was Iraq. These young Americans were thrashed by war, then sent home with physical and emotional wounds so gaping and incongruous with our own lives that most of us had - and still have - no idea how to acknowledge, much less grasp them.
Klay's writing is gritty, unflinching, and vivid. Reading some of these stories felt like my raw soul skidding over sandpaper. But I think that is the very least of what I am supposed to feel if I am to understand anything. Especially when so many veterans don't have the option of simply closing the book on their own experiences of the war.
"We shot dogs. Not by accident. We did it on purpose, and we called it Operation Scooby."
I would stop there and think, "Really? You have to do it this way, Klay? You have to shove it in my face like Hollywood, when I'm trying to understand?"
I left the book sitting on my bedside table. It was a library book, so it became due. I returned it, unread.
About a month later I checked it out again because I felt compelled. Like it was my duty as a citizen leading a typically plump, clueless, suburban life to get past my (let's be honest) petty discomfort and spend some time with this book and what it had to say.
I am so glad I did. What I couldn't get past in those first three sentences was precisely what so many of the short stories in this collection depicted so skillfully - the spiritual and emotional maelstrom that our Marines and soldiers were thrown into when they served in the moral void that was Iraq. These young Americans were thrashed by war, then sent home with physical and emotional wounds so gaping and incongruous with our own lives that most of us had - and still have - no idea how to acknowledge, much less grasp them.
Klay's writing is gritty, unflinching, and vivid. Reading some of these stories felt like my raw soul skidding over sandpaper. But I think that is the very least of what I am supposed to feel if I am to understand anything. Especially when so many veterans don't have the option of simply closing the book on their own experiences of the war.