I'm a huge fan of every other book I've read by Tim O'Brien, with "The Things They Carried" occasionally being in my top ten books ever read. "Northern Lights" was his very first, and it's.... rough going. O'Brien attempted to evoke similar brevity as Hemingway but with a modernist bent, especially when capturing the not-at-ease bedtime conversations between lovers. Unfortunately it just didn't work, and it's no surprise that O'Brien never attempted this kind of prose again. Infamously, the two-pages of "do you love me?" repeated ad nauseam; I get what he was going for, but nah.