This book was intensely sad. The author dealt with an extremely difficult topic and made it so real and so ethereal at the same time. Drawing on his own experience to write this impressive book I'm sure wasn't easy, and I appreacite the pain he went through both in experienceing th war and then again reliving it in writing. I think you can definitely tell that he is a poet first, the language seomtimes got philosophical and descriptive to the point that I couldn't really tell what he was trying to say. But I think one could take that a little bit as a representation of how he felt during his time in the service, and in that sense it worked well. The part that hit me most was the pasage from p. 144-146 where he dicusses his shame and guilt and how unsure he is under the weight of all the apreciation he is receving from people who don't understand (or just think they do, or don't even want to try to) what he actually did in order to receive that appreciation. It was eye-opening and a perspective I had never heard before. This is just an amazing book and the author deserves credit for this on many different levels. This was really just heartbreaking.

Ugh. This book was exhausting to get through...took me double the amount of time it normally takes me to get through a novel this length. I would say bleak is one of the best words I've seen to describe it. I can see how it won a pulitzer, it's a great look into a human tragedy with a mix of the mystical, but it was just not my book. It was a struggle to finish.