The Things They Carried

Here's the long-form cut of my Goodreads review of The Things They Carried, which I very much enjoyed:

A consensus favorite high school reading assignment of friends who hated high school reading assignments. It's a collection of interconnected Vietnam War short stories - or possibly memoirs, but really, what's the difference? - from Tim O'Brien, who was there. It's full of all your standard war tropes and stock characters, except that it's light on gruesome battle action. Focuses instead on the misery and solace between the battles, and on how death and violence can weigh on a man, freeze a man in the heat of the moment, drive a man to suicide years later. Gradually changes from a story about conflicts to an internal conflict over stories. Author O'Brien yields to narrator Tim, who freely admits in later stories that earlier stories were only that: stories, gussied up with artistic liberty. There's a compelling case made for "story" truth being more important than "real" truth; Tim will exaggerate what it's like to kill a man in order for a reader to more closely comprehend that feeling, even if the details themselves are exaggerations or complete fabrications. The whole thing ends with Tim suggesting along the same lines that writing about the dead is as close as one can get to bringing them back to life, if only for a fleeting moment. Solid stuff, and it doesn't waste any time, as the best story (the eponymous one) hits a home run right out of the leadoff spot.

Goddammit. This was supposed to make me word things more concisely!