I think this is classed as a biog? Perhaps a fictionalised biog?

Anyway, I read The Things They Carried a couple of months ago, and totally loved it. I immediately vowed to read everything by Tim O'Brien that I could, and this book lept into my hands while I was shopping for 40th birthday pressies formy hubby. I have started to read it, but only got a few pages in so far.

I may send this on a ring when I'm done, depending on how attached I get after the first reading.

I took a while to get into this book, as I expected it to be 'The Things They Carried', and of course this is a seperate book. This is the author's story of how he got drafted, how he felt about it, how close he came to going AWOL and giving the war a miss entirely.

Once I stopped trying to read it as another book, I really enjoyed this. O'Brien does not go into too much detail, but paints a very vivid picture of what life was like for the soldiers. Short chapters describe cruelty inflicted on Vietnamese people who may or may not have been VC. I will continue to seek out anything by Tim O'Brien - excellent writer.