THE THINGS THEY CARRIED by Tim O'Brien ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.”

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Instantly good. I want all stories told this way. Like the narrator is reliving them with you, tapping into something human and eternal and pouring it out in front of you. I ate it right up.

I remember passages of this book were used in my creative writing courses, but my image of the book then was so different. You look at the cover and the title and you think it’s a Band of Brothers-type, a respectful but tough look at war. But this is straight no bullshit stories about going to hell and back, going in young and naive and coming out changed. Even if it’s maybe mostly fiction based on fact, this one stings in all kinds of ways. It’s a burn you’ll enjoy and maybe be afraid of enjoying.

There are some absolutely brutal chapters here. Vignettes of gore and the darkness humans tend to find when pushed. There are also very poetic juxtapositions and passages about Americana and youth and the beauty of life, and maybe even the beauty of war. I shifted constantly between wanting to know what was really from O’Brien’s life and not caring either way. Like he says throughout, “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”

It’s not for the faint of heart, but it is gorgeous writing. Anyone can recognize it. And there are deep truths that ring out and a relatability that will strike you. Like it was meant to find you. At one point, there was a story about a teenager driving around his hometown lake just like I did countless times after turning sixteen. The scene is from the sixties, published in the early nineties, both before I was born. Yet it found me, a piece of me and my past that I forgot I held so dear reflected back from another person’s mind. Isn’t that what we all want, to see part of ourselves inside the story?

This is one of the most quote-worthy books I’ve ever read, especially on storytelling and writing and memory. So, I have to leave you with one more.

“And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”