Reckoning the Experience of War

What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes
New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, c2011.
xii, 256 p. ; 22 cm.

I bought this book after reading a positive review of it in Leatherneck, the magazine of the US Marines.  I was interested in it since the author had been a US Marine in Vietnam and a Rhodes scholar and a novelist.  Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm really very opposed to war, except as a last resort and have no interest in books that romanticize or glorify combat.

This book is a thoughtful, honest account of the experience of deadly combat on a young, intelligent person.  The author takes exceptional pains to be honest about his behaviors, motivations, fears, successes, and what he as learned of war and combat through both experience and study.   He is not interested in glorifying combat or vilifying enemies that the US has waged war with.  His goal seems to be to try to convey what the life-altering and profoundly destructive nature of war is like to anyone who will read his book.

Whatever one's opinions are on the military adventures of the United States, anyone working with young people knows that many of the students we work with choose the military as an option after high school or are considering it as an option.  With that in mind, a book such as What It Is Like to Go to War would be a very beneficial book to get into the hands of any thoughtful student who wants to wrestle with the idea of war and his or her possible participation in war or who asks if there is an account of what war is like.

War, Survival, and... Oh, That Other Thing

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
New York : Wendy Lamb Books, c2004.
194 p. ; 22 cm.


How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff's first novel, came out almost eight years ago - and it was about that long ago when I first read it.  It received a lot of critical praise - including the Printz Award - and I recall that I liked it well enough.  I revisited the novel because recently our English department was looking for a novel that would be required reading for English 9 classes - and the teachers wanted a novel that was engaging, relatively contemporary and had a high lexile score.  How I Live Now seemed to answer all those requirements: it involves teen characters in an imagined contemporary England, its lexile score is over 1300, and it involves suspense, war and violence, family relationships, and romance - so it should be popular for both young men and women.

I found I really enjoyed the novel the second time.  It is well written, interesting, timely and mature.   It deals with themes of terrorism, violence, survival, family bonds, mild dislocation (an American in England), serious dislocation (war refugees) and is well plotted and moves along.  There would be a lot to discuss in a classroom regarding this novel...BUT...

...there would be one (very big) problem with using this novel as required reading in a class: the main love affair involves a sixteen year old girl (the narrator) in an intense and sexual relationship with her fourteen year old first cousin.  It's too bad - really - because the plot and deep issues of the novel do not depend on having these two lovers being family or being fourteen and sixteen.  If they both were sixteen or seventeen and not blood relatives, then the novel would be fine for classes - since the sexual activity is just referred to and not detailed by the author. Of course, one can not expect an author to change their artistic expression just to fit the needs of a school curriculum, but it would be interesting to hear why Rosoff felt it was necessary to have the two lovers be blood relatives and for one to be so young....

That addresses the usefulness of the book as required curriculum material, but my other dislike was with the end of the novel.  Without spoiling too much of the plot, I found the six year jump in time at the end of the novel and the absolute and complete personality change in one of the main characters to be rather unbelievable.  I think a shorter jump in time would have been effective and a more subtle (and yet still disturbing/damaging) character change would have made the ending more poignant and less melodramatic.