Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #525051 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

Vietnam, seen backwards
The Things They Carried was written several years after O'Brien was a 'grunt' there. It's written consciously retrospectively, and as such, it's not autobiography; rather, it's a distillation of his experiences before, during, and since Vietnam. Paradoxically, O'Brien making (fictionalised) stories of what he and others witnessed makes the experience more 'true' than just retelling them. Truth for him is faithfully reproducing sensation and emotion in a reader, not retelling events chronologically or even logically; Primo Levi's famous quotation about Anne Frank came to mind. O'Brien is interested in the impact war has on *love*, not just *life*, and that's the genius of this work: it's a love story about Vietnam. I've read it a dozen times now and it still makes me want to cry and rejoice all at the same time.

An amazing book
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED is a powerful memoir in the form of a collection of short stories about the haunting life of Tim O'Brien and a company of soldiers in Vietnam.
The Things They Carried was a thought-provoking and inspirational book. This highly vivid description of the Vietnam War kept me reading through the night until the last page. I am not a big reader but once I picked up this book I was reading for hours! This book gives a taste of Vietnam for those who were not there. The interesting thing about this book is that it tells the true life of the soldiers giving us a better idea of what the soldiers went, and what war really is. One comes close to understanding how the feelings from going to war, leaving their families behind them, losing loved friends, killing another man, and how the pathetic nature of the foods and sleeping conditions; all traumas of war that can change a human being forever.

If you like war novels, then this is a must read. Even if you don't like war books and think they're all the same, read this and you will reconsider. One thing for sure is that you will appreciate the style of writing and the way it makes you think. You still get to laugh despite the deaths and destructions. The soldiers seem to taunt life with life and death games. Written with a deep message and in a manner similar to CHEKHOV AND TISI JANVIER, this anthology of related short stories about the Vietnam War portrays men who faced their fears, confronted danger, came out alive but became scarred for life.

BRUTAL HONESTY
The first thing that grabbed me about O'Brien's collection of short stories about the Vietnam war, was the stark realism. This is an exploration of the human condition rather than a war story per se. O'Brien's prose is lathered with irony and a distinct sense of hopelessness pervades his eloquent narrative. Emotions are laid bare, and the psychological turmoil caused by the war itself are presented with veracity and aplomb. This is realism of the highest order. Simply brilliant
billy proctor
sunderland