Fobbit

"Sir, is your captain a complete and utter idiot prone to eating Stupid Sandwiches at every meal?" Duret couldn't meet the battle captain's eyes. "Something like that, I guess." I had been saving this book for a rainy day - that is to say, after being in something of a slump. I saw it as a treat: some......more

If somewhere there is a society devoted to bleakness, where to have a bleak outlook is aspired to by all, and the highest virtue is to live life as bleakly as possible, this book should be on their school syllabus. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Life can be bleak. War is always bleak. So it f......more

Definitely disappointed with Fobbit. Mildly amusing and insightful Iraq observations for the first two chapters, but then it just begins to tell the same thing over and over. There's no central inciting incident or storyline to drive the pages. Worst, the characters are all treated with an equal and......more

This brilliant, powerfully rendered debut seizes you by the collar; spits, shouts, whispers and laughs in your ear, drags you through the sweat, pus, blood and grit of war in Iraq, 2005, and ultimately pulls every string in your heart to reveal at its core, as only a true classic war story can, the......more

I read an uncorrected advanced review copy; please bear in mind that some of the small problems I saw may have been fixed in the final revision. First, the positives. The book paints a convincing picture of the claustrophobic world of the Forward Operating Base during the early years of the American......more