A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Michael Toms for the iconic New Dimensions radio show. Toms, often called the...
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Danielle Marshall, January 30, 2013 (view all comments by Danielle Marshall)
The strongest contemplative young male character voice since The Catcher in the Rye. The book perfectly captures the randy young male eye - and that eye ultimately sees the grotesque and out of touch American praise of wartime heroism. Billy Lynn's conflict between service and self haunted me long after the last page.
jcnoble, January 1, 2013 (view all comments by jcnoble)
A book I couldn't stop reading and now can't stop thinking about. I gave it as gifts to several people. I will probably re-read it at some point in the future, which is something I rarely do.
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Waney, December 31, 2012 (view all comments by Waney)
If you saw and enjoyed the compelling TV series Generation Kill, then I think you will love this book. There are many outrageous claims made for the book on the back of the proof copy I read and, I have to say, they all stand up. This is classic literature that will stand the test of time; classic in the sense that it joins a long list of stories about the damage done to young men by a foreign war and the difficulties they face in re-adapting to their homeland. It is also a damning, lacerating dissection of a certain facet of United States society - of those people who are well content to talk the talk of war but are happily oblivious of the cost. The story is also consistently funny - bitingly so - and all the more heartbreaking for that.
Katsuya, December 28, 2012 (view all comments by Katsuya)
I was a huge fan of Ben Fountain's short story collection Brief Encounters With Che Guevara, so I was eagerly anticipating his first novel. The novel focuses on one of the author's favorite themes - innocents serving as the pawns for power players in the world of politics. The writing on every page is dazzling, and his gift at description, character building and lyricism are so jaw-droppingly good I found myself highlighting section after section until I stopped because I would have highlighted the whole book.Once I started reading, I couldn't put the book down. The story is heartbreaking and penetrating and feels, ultimately, too true.
"Review"
by San Francisco Chronicle,
"Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is not merely good; its Pulitzer Prize-quality good....A bracing, fearless and uproarious satire of how contemporary war is waged and sold to the American public.”
"Review"
by New York Times Book Review,
“Brilliantly done...grand, intimate, and joyous.”
"Review"
by New York Times,
“[An] inspired, blistering war novel….Though it covers only a few hours, the book is a gripping, eloquent provocation. Class, privilege, power, politics, sex, commerce and the life-or-death dynamics of battle all figure in Billy Lynn's surreal game day experience.”
"Review"
by Washington Post,
“A masterful echo of ‘Catch-22, with war in Iraq at the center.…[A] gut-punch of a debut novel.…There's hardly a false note, or even a slightly off-pitch one, in Fountain's sympathetic, damning and structurally ambitious novel.”
"Review"
by The New Yorker,
“Fountain's excellent first novel follows a group of soldiers at a Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving Day.…Through the eyes of the titular soldier, Fountain creates a minutely observed portrait of a society with woefully misplaced priorities. [Fountain has] a pitch-perfect ear for American talk.”
"Review"
by The Daily Beast,
“Biting, thoughtful, and absolutely spot-on....This postmodern swirl of inner substance, yellow ribbons, and good(ish) intentions is at the core of Ben Fountain's brilliant Bush-era novel.”
"Review"
by Huffington Post,
“Ben Fountain combines blistering, beautiful language with razor-sharp insight…and has written a funny novel that provides skewering critiques of America's obsession with sports, spectacle, and war.”
"Review"
by Nancy Pearl, NPR, Morning Edition,
“A brilliantly conceived first novel....The irony, sorrow, anger and examples of cognitive dissonance that suffuse this novel make it one of the most moving and remarkable novels I've ever read.”
"Review"
by Sports Illustrated,
“Seething, brutally funny…[Fountain] leaves readers with a fully realized band of brothers.…Fountain's readers will never look at an NFL Sunday, or at America, in quite the same way.”
"Review"
by Tampa Bay Times,
“The Iraq war hasn't yet had its Catch-22 or Slaughterhouse-Five, but Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a contender….A wicked sense of humor, wonderful writing and, beneath the anger and outrage, a generous heart.”
"Review"
by Minneapolis Star Tribune,
“Fountain's strength as a writer is that he not only can conjure up this all-too-realistic-sounding mob, but also the young believably innocent soul for our times, Specialist Billy Lynn. And from the first page I found myself rooting for him, often from the edge of my seat.”
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews (starred review),
“[T]he shell-shocked humor will likely conjure comparisons with Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five.…War is hell in this novel of inspired absurdity.”
"Review"
by Shelf Awareness,
“A truly wondrous first novel.”
"Review"
by Cleveland Plain Dealer,
“While Fountain undoubtedly knows his Graham Greene and Paul Theroux, his excursions into foreign infernos have an innocence all their own. In between his nihilistic descriptions, a boyishness keeps peeking out, cracking one-liners and admiring the amazing if benighted scenery.”
"Review"
by Harper's Magazine,
“Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a big one. This is the brush-clearing Bush book we've been waiting for.”
"Review"
by Esquire,
“It's a darkly humorous satire about the war at home, absurd and believable at the same time.”
"Review"
by Los Angeles Times,
“Darkly comic.…Rarely does such a ruminative novel close with such momentum.”
"Synopsis"
by Harper Collins,
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and a finalist for the National Book Award!
From the PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author of the critically acclaimed short story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, comes Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk ("The Catch-22 of the Iraq War" —Karl Marlantes).
A razor-sharp satire set in Texas during America's war in Iraq, it explores the gaping national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad.
Ben Fountain's remarkable debut novel follows the surviving members of the heroic Bravo Squad through one exhausting stop in their media-intensive "Victory Tour" at Texas Stadium, football mecca of the Dallas Cowboys, their fans, promoters, and cheerleaders.
"Synopsis"
by Harper Collins,
A finalist for the National Book Award!
Three minutes and forty-three seconds of intense warfare with Iraqi insurgents has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America's most sought-after heroes. Now they're on a media-intensive nationwide tour to reinvigorate support for the war. On this rainy Thanksgiving, the Bravos are guests of the Dallas Cowboys, slated to be part of the halftime show alongside Destiny's Child.
Among the Bravos is Specialist Billy Lynn. Surrounded by patriots sporting flag pins on their lapels and Support Our Troops bumper stickers, he is thrust into the company of the Cowboys' owner and his coterie of wealthy colleagues; a born-again Cowboys cheerleader; a veteran Hollywood producer; and supersized players eager for a vicarious taste of war. Over the course of this day, Billy will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision, and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years.
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