Harrowing yet gorgeous. This book blends the line between reality and story so strongly that I still don't really know what happened to O'Brien and what didn't - and I also don't think that's really the point. This is a meta book, as much about how to write a war novel and the fantasies we tell ourselves as it is about the Vietnam War itself. Hopeful? Perhaps, if survival itself is hopeful. I feel like that's almost an insult to the platoon, though.