Close Quarters, Larry Heinemann
Close Quarters, Larry Heinemann
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Close Quarters

Author: Larry Heinemann

Narrator: Richard Ferrone

Unabridged: 9 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download (DRM Protected)

Published: 01/01/2006


Synopsis

From the moment his first novel was published, Larry Heinemann joined the ranks of the great chroniclers of the Vietnam conflict: Philip Caputo, Tim O’Brien, and Gustav Hasford.In the stripped-down, unsullied patois of an ordinary soldier, draftee Philip Dosier tells his story of the war. Straight from high school, too young to vote or buy himself a drink, he enters a world of mud and heat, blood and body counts, ambushes and firefights. It is here that he embarks on the brutal downward path to wisdom that awaits every soldier.In the tradition of The Naked and the Dead and The Thin Red Line, Close Quarters is the harrowing story of how a decent kid from Chicago endures an extraordinary trial and returns profoundly altered to a world on the threshold of change.

About Larry Heinemann

Larry Heinemann is an American novelist born and raised in Chicago .His novel Paco’s Story won the National Book Award. His body of work—three novels and a memoir—is primarily concerned with the Vietnam War. He served a combat tour as a conscripted draftee in Viet Nam from 1967 to 1968 with the 25th Infantry Division and has described himself as the most ordinary of soldiers.

About Richard Ferrone

Read by Richard Ferrone, Stephen Bel Davies, Prentice Onayemi, Scott Aiello, Michael David Axtell, Jessica B. Harris, and Amanda Leigh Cobb


Reviews

Goodreads review by Eric_W on March 12, 2009

This is not a book for the faint-hearted. If you don't like graphic violence, the f-word, and ethnic slurs, lots of brutal and mind-numbing sex, you should leave right now. Categorized as a novel, I suspect many of the incidents in this book reflected Heinemann's personal experiences in "the Nam." T......more

Goodreads review by Ryan on February 19, 2025

I first got hold of this book by accident. I'd ordered Close Quarters, published by Faber and Faber. The book that arrived was indeed Close Quarters, published by Faber and Faber. The only difference was the author was an American named Larry Heinemann, not William Golding. The cover featured a tank......more

Goodreads review by Larry on June 15, 2016

This book that I experienced in the audible format was just too crude and disgusting for me. Was this how war really made men into? Fuck this and fuck that? Killing innocent and not so innocent gooks? All the intensity of bloodlust? The quality of the reading captured all the horror and hate. But it......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on January 21, 2022

Definitely the rawest book on war I’ve ever read.......more

Goodreads review by Annabel on January 10, 2020

Viet Nam As good as any of several books about actual experiences in the war that I have read since 1970. This is gritty, harrowing and realistic in every action these men take--from battle to sex to getting stoned. A nightmare of service and a nightmare of a read. We are indebted far more than we re......more


Quotes

“An unremittingly honest look into the black pit of war…Larry Heinemann’s voice is clear and true.” New York Times

“Close Quarters can stand with the finest Vietnam writing, fact or fiction.” Chicago Tribune

“The best work of fiction to come out of the Vietnam War.” Houston Chronicle

“The most ambitious and substantial novel about the war in Vietnam…The first one that people can read seventy-five years from now and gain an insight into how the war was truly fought…Following the talk of the soldiers, you feel more like an eavesdropper than a reader.” Kansas City Star