A year at the zoo

Zoo Station

By David Downing

I haven’t read much from war-time Berlin, and I think this was a good introduction. Not because of the story, but because of Downing’s vivid evocation of the time and place.

Flying high

The Last Kestrel

By Jill McGivering

It would be easy to dismiss McGivering’s debut novel as ‘me-too lit’. She and her publishers spotted the success of The Kite Runner and, driven by McGivering’s personal experiences as a frontline war correspondent, hatched a plan to produce another book about Afghanistan for Western readers. This approach may indeed be what happened. But the product nevertheless surpasses any cynical design the audience may wish to infer.

Carry on storytelling

The Things They Carried

By Tim O’Brien

When I recently told a friend the title of the book I was reading, he said, “That sounds like something a creative writing class would study.” He’s right – this book is on writing and literature class syllabuses around the world. I came across one of the stories years ago in such a class. And while I am usually resistant to ‘poster books’ held up by writing tutors as examples to follow (because that’s largely missing the point of creative writing), my rule does not apply to The Things They Carried.

In fact, hardly any rules apply to this outstanding piece of work. It is fiction, memoir, history and reportage all at the same time. I cannot imagine a more effective way of describing a soldier’s journey through the Vietnam war and its impact on his life. O’Brien’s achievement is in realising that any story about war is exactly that – a story, with artifice and design laced through it by the nature of telling. And so he writes self-reflexively about war storytelling, both among friends and in books.

His descriptions of the battle zone and combat itself are succinct and frank. There is not a spare word anywhere. To use a cliché, he really tells it like it is. O’Brien’s characters are clear distinctive and, of course, authentic – even the ones he made up. But perhaps the most moving aspect of this book is the contrast between the war zone and the outside world, both before and after. O’Brien describes his youth and his comrade’s post-war depression in what has to be the most effective way I could ever think of. The tale of his friend’s life after the war is one of the best short stories I’ve ever read.