After 'The Round House' this is the second book in my effort to understand National Book Awards. The reason I put effort in bold because after 2 books I have found that NBA winners are written for a specific set of readers in mind and not necessarily for the average ones. I picked 4 NBA winners from library few weeks back and now after finishing two, I have no intention of reading the other two.
Redeployment is a collection of 12 stories taken from experiences of American marines during Iraq and Afghanistan war. The stories show brutal effects and after-effects of war on soldiers from different perspectives - The book starts with story 'redeployment' a soldier who is recently back from deployment and trying to settle down in his old life. There are some good stories like 'After action report' where a solider take blame/credit for a killing he did not commit to unburden his mate. In 'Prayer in the furnace' there is a chaplain who finds it hard to praise the lord in the midst of all the violence. The best story for me though, is definitely 'Money as Weapons System'. It is like a dark comedy, where a reconstruction team tries to setup a water treatment plant for warring factions of Shia and Sunnis, and also receives a consignment of baseball uniforms with absurd task of teaching baseball to Iraqis to improve their lives.
Not all stories are good though. The 'OIF' was filled with military acronyms and jargons and I had to keep searching google to not miss any of them. I did not like 'In Vietnam they had whores' and 'Psychological operations'. One about father telling his son his brothel escapades in Vietnam, and another filled with profanities about women and religion. Rest of the stories have nothing much to remember.
There was a lot of information I got from this book though. There was a lot of military jargon to know, which i googled. Then some stories had this unique view of hard life in Iraq for both locals and soldiers, which made me research more to get to know about the topic. Overall, I like a few stories, but not the entire book. I don't think I will be picking a National book award winner or nominee anytime soon.
Not all stories are good though. The 'OIF' was filled with military acronyms and jargons and I had to keep searching google to not miss any of them. I did not like 'In Vietnam they had whores' and 'Psychological operations'. One about father telling his son his brothel escapades in Vietnam, and another filled with profanities about women and religion. Rest of the stories have nothing much to remember.
There was a lot of information I got from this book though. There was a lot of military jargon to know, which i googled. Then some stories had this unique view of hard life in Iraq for both locals and soldiers, which made me research more to get to know about the topic. Overall, I like a few stories, but not the entire book. I don't think I will be picking a National book award winner or nominee anytime soon.
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