Articles of War

The term "MFA fiction", or fiction written by graduates of masters degrees in writing, often draws flack from readers as "dull" and "overwritten", not always rightly so, but I think in this case Articles of War deserves the label it plasters over itself--you can't even get to the first page of this......more

George Tilson leaves his Iowa home for Normandy as an eighteen-year-old recruit in World War II. Shy and unassuming, he keeps to himself and earns the nickname “Heck” because he doesn’t swear. He is muscled from summers of farm labor, and knows how to work long and hard without complaint. But combat......more

The war in Iraq has already inspired a catalog of books, but so far the best are nonfiction. (Seymour Hersh's detractors may disagree.) Fictional treatments of the battles in Baghdad and Fallujah will eventually inform attitudes about the Iraq war even more powerfully than today's news reports and h......more

I'd seen Nick Arvin's ARTICLES OF WAR on a list of distinguished war novels, so when I came across it in a used book store, I snapped it up. It wasn't long before I wondered how it had earned the praise. Another Goodreads reviewer labeled it as MFA fiction, and about 50 pages in, I had to agree. It's......more