I'm absolutely stunned by this book. Well, this collection of short stories that still feels like I just read a novel. Did that make sense or am I wackadoodle? The short stories seem like chapters but they all serve a purpose uniquely, bleed together well & seamlessly. Psychologically everything felt so blurry and like it was all happening so fast and all the plot points were the same but different. O'Brien wasn't grisly on purpose, but he excellently portrayed how complex / nuanced / lovable / frustrating human behavior can be. Favorite story: The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong. "Everywhere, it seemed, in the trees and water and sky, a great worldwide sadness came pressing down on me, a crushing sorrow, sorrow like I had never felt before."

Now that I'm actually awake, I might as well write something about this. I took a little break from In Memoriam and this was on hand to read on train rides and dude this was so good? I wasn't feeling it at first and the Sweetheart chapter took me a long while to get through, but after that the book took off so fast. The way fiction v reality is presented is so nicely done, and man the way O'Brien writes about war is so emotional. There's so many quotes in this I could put here - but alas Anyways this was good, thanks professor american lit for recommending this