Jim's Reviews > Fives and Twenty-Fives

Not a bad effort for a first novel, and I suspect a lot of veterans will like it (especially the efforts to readjust to life after fighting) but I was, as an outsider to war, less than impressed overall. The story was fine, but I honestly am coming to dislike multiple narrators, especially when they jump back and forth with flashbacks. It has become a fashion with new writers it seems, and only a few really do it well methinks (Erdritch, and even then I don't really love it). It was a little different from some stories from our recent wars in that one of the voices is of an Iraqi interpreter (who is a literature major in love with Mark Twain's Huck Finn) who worked for the Americans. I find I enjoy the nonfiction war stories more than the fiction most of the time. Except for some, like Tim O'Brien.