Collection
Status
Available
Description
In the midst of a bloody battle in the Iraq War, two soldiers, bound together since basic training, do everything to protect each other from both outside enemies and the internal struggles that come from constant danger.
Media reviews
A remarkable, beautifully understated, powerful, yet poised novel.
The novel moves, fitfully, through Virginia and Iraq and Germany and New Jersey and Kentucky, from 2003 to 2009. Recalling the war, Bartle says, is “like putting a puzzle together from behind: the shapes familiar, the picture quickly fading, the muted tan of the cardboard backing a tease at
Then too, the fractured structure replicates the book’s themes. Like a chase scene made up of sentences that run on and on and ultimately leave readers breathless, or like a concert description that stops and starts, that swings and sways, that makes us stamp our feet and clap our hands — the nonlinear design of Powers’s novel is a beautifully brutal example of style matching content. War destroys. It doesn’t just rip through bone and muscle, stone and steel; it fragments the mind as a fist to a mirror might create thousands of bloodied, glittering shards.
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wholeness and completion.” This serves the story in two ways. First, it turns readers into active participants, enlisting them in a sense as co-authors who fit together the many memories and guess at what terrible secret lies in wait, the truth behind Murphy’s death. Because they lean forward instead of back, because they participate in piecing together the puzzle, they are made more culpable.Then too, the fractured structure replicates the book’s themes. Like a chase scene made up of sentences that run on and on and ultimately leave readers breathless, or like a concert description that stops and starts, that swings and sways, that makes us stamp our feet and clap our hands — the nonlinear design of Powers’s novel is a beautifully brutal example of style matching content. War destroys. It doesn’t just rip through bone and muscle, stone and steel; it fragments the mind as a fist to a mirror might create thousands of bloodied, glittering shards.
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...and while few will have expected the war in Iraq to bring forth a novel that can stand beside All Quiet on the Western Front or The Red Badge of Courage, The Yellow Birds does just that, for our time, as those books did for theirs.
User reviews
LibraryThing member richardderus
Rating: 4.75* of five
The Book Description: "The war tried to kill us in the spring," begins this breathtaking account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the
Bound together since basic training when their tough-as-nails Sergeant ordered Bartle to watch over Murphy, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him and Bartle takes impossible actions.
With profound emotional insight, especially into the effects of a hidden war on mothers and families at home, THE YELLOW BIRDS is a groundbreaking novel about the costs of war that is destined to become a classic.
My Review: I do so wish publishers would stop using the phrase “destined to become a classic” because, even if I agree with them (in this case I do), it's so obviously a sales pitch that it's a turn off.
No one knows for sure what the future will consider a classic. No one in 1955 would've given The Lord of the Rings future-classic status. No one in 1851 would've known about Moby-Dick, it was such a flop! The Great Gatsby? Please! Out of print by 1940!
This book, fragmented like PTSD memories, written in deceptively simple sentences by a *shudder* poet of all things, earns my admiration for its beauty, its simplicity, its sheer raw emotional up-front-ness. It has these, and many other, things in common with books that have stood the test of time and become classics. It is a first novel; it is about a young man's journey into a unique hell of memory and the maze he travels even to imagine daylight guiding him out; it is, one strongly suspects based on the author's CV, a roman à clef. So far, so good, for the oddsmakers' guess it will become a classic; so did The Naked and the Dead, so did The Sun Also Rises, and so on. I think it will be a classic. I hope it will, and I offer this passage as support for my hopes and conviction:
When we neared the orchard a flock of birds lit from its outer rows. They hadn't been there long. The branches shook with their absent weight and the birds circled above in the riddy mackerel sky, where they made an artless semaphore. I was afraid, I smelled copper and cheap wine. The sun was up, but a half-moon hung low on the opposite horizon, cutting through the morning sky like a figure from a child's pull-tab book.
We were lined along the ditch up to our ankles in a soupy muck. It all seemed in that moment to be the conclusion of a poorly designed experiment in inevitability. Everything was in its proper place, waiting for a pause in time, for the source of all momentum to be stilled, so that what remained would be nothing more than detritus to be tallied up. The world was paper-thin as far as I could tell. And the world was the orchard, and the orchard was what came next. But none of that was true. I was only afraid of dying.” (p115, US hardcover edition)
That, for me, is a lovely moment of mortal fear's hyperreality-inducing sensory twist. Never having been in war, I can't say it's what a soldier would feel, but having been afraid for my life from external causes, I can say that is the kind of sharp-edged seemingly odd clarity of perception that happened to me. The author was a soldier in Iraq. I suspect he saw and felt these exact things, and because he's *gag* an MFA-havin' poet, he remembered them with extreme precision.
Kevin Powers is One To Watch. If his book wins a National Book Award, which I strongly suspect it will, this could be the best novel we see from him. I hope it does, and I pray it doesn't, and I most urgently petition the Muses for his beautiful, beautiful talent to survive intact the horrors of commerce, where the agonies of war built a palace for him.
The Book Description: "The war tried to kill us in the spring," begins this breathtaking account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the
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city. In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger.Bound together since basic training when their tough-as-nails Sergeant ordered Bartle to watch over Murphy, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him and Bartle takes impossible actions.
With profound emotional insight, especially into the effects of a hidden war on mothers and families at home, THE YELLOW BIRDS is a groundbreaking novel about the costs of war that is destined to become a classic.
My Review: I do so wish publishers would stop using the phrase “destined to become a classic” because, even if I agree with them (in this case I do), it's so obviously a sales pitch that it's a turn off.
No one knows for sure what the future will consider a classic. No one in 1955 would've given The Lord of the Rings future-classic status. No one in 1851 would've known about Moby-Dick, it was such a flop! The Great Gatsby? Please! Out of print by 1940!
This book, fragmented like PTSD memories, written in deceptively simple sentences by a *shudder* poet of all things, earns my admiration for its beauty, its simplicity, its sheer raw emotional up-front-ness. It has these, and many other, things in common with books that have stood the test of time and become classics. It is a first novel; it is about a young man's journey into a unique hell of memory and the maze he travels even to imagine daylight guiding him out; it is, one strongly suspects based on the author's CV, a roman à clef. So far, so good, for the oddsmakers' guess it will become a classic; so did The Naked and the Dead, so did The Sun Also Rises, and so on. I think it will be a classic. I hope it will, and I offer this passage as support for my hopes and conviction:
When we neared the orchard a flock of birds lit from its outer rows. They hadn't been there long. The branches shook with their absent weight and the birds circled above in the riddy mackerel sky, where they made an artless semaphore. I was afraid, I smelled copper and cheap wine. The sun was up, but a half-moon hung low on the opposite horizon, cutting through the morning sky like a figure from a child's pull-tab book.
We were lined along the ditch up to our ankles in a soupy muck. It all seemed in that moment to be the conclusion of a poorly designed experiment in inevitability. Everything was in its proper place, waiting for a pause in time, for the source of all momentum to be stilled, so that what remained would be nothing more than detritus to be tallied up. The world was paper-thin as far as I could tell. And the world was the orchard, and the orchard was what came next. But none of that was true. I was only afraid of dying.” (p115, US hardcover edition)
That, for me, is a lovely moment of mortal fear's hyperreality-inducing sensory twist. Never having been in war, I can't say it's what a soldier would feel, but having been afraid for my life from external causes, I can say that is the kind of sharp-edged seemingly odd clarity of perception that happened to me. The author was a soldier in Iraq. I suspect he saw and felt these exact things, and because he's *gag* an MFA-havin' poet, he remembered them with extreme precision.
Kevin Powers is One To Watch. If his book wins a National Book Award, which I strongly suspect it will, this could be the best novel we see from him. I hope it does, and I pray it doesn't, and I most urgently petition the Muses for his beautiful, beautiful talent to survive intact the horrors of commerce, where the agonies of war built a palace for him.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jnwelch
In [The Yellow Birds], author [Kevin Powers] packs a lot of punch into a slim novel. It principally is about 10 months in the lives of Bartle and Murph and Sergeant Sterling, from military training in New Jersey to battling in Al Tafar, Iraq in 2004, and then the aftermath. It manages to eloquently
Powers is economical with words and vividly draws us in throughout the book. An example:
"We didn't see where the fire came from when it came. We saw only the leaves as they flickered about and the small chunks of wood and pieces of earth that danced around us. When the ringing of the first shots subsided, we heard bullets, sounds like small rips in the air, reports of rifles from somewhere we couldn't see. I was struck by a kind of lethargy, in awe of the decisiveness of every single attenuated moment, observed in minute detail each slender moving branch and the narrow bands of sunlight coming through the leaves. Someone pulled me down to the orchard floor, and coming out of it I dragged myself on my elbows behind a withered clump of trees."
Later, when he sees "one man fall in a heap near the bank of the river among the bullrushes and green fields on its edges . . . I disowned the waters of my youth. My memories of them became a useless luxury . . ." As Bartle gets drawn further and further in, one of the surprises for me is this is not the Iraq of endless deserts that lives in my imagination. The author fought in this area, and the detail has the reader in boots on the ground.
What is done to survive, in Iraq and back home, is one strong theme of this story. Others are what is lost, and what cannot be borne. Decisions are made by these young men that may even be right, but they will shadow them for the rest of their lives.
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convey the frequent disconnected senselessness and dehumanizing effects of this recent war, and to provide a new angle on the difficulties of returning home. Bartle, in particular, is celebrated as a hero, but is plagued by his knowledge of the sordid events he experienced. As we learn more about the friendship that develops between Bartle and Murph, and the chilling practicality of Sergeant Sterling, who is dedicated to maximizing their chances for survival, we are reminded that we are talking about two 18 year olds and a 21 year old. What they experience would be difficult for men twice their age to handle.Powers is economical with words and vividly draws us in throughout the book. An example:
"We didn't see where the fire came from when it came. We saw only the leaves as they flickered about and the small chunks of wood and pieces of earth that danced around us. When the ringing of the first shots subsided, we heard bullets, sounds like small rips in the air, reports of rifles from somewhere we couldn't see. I was struck by a kind of lethargy, in awe of the decisiveness of every single attenuated moment, observed in minute detail each slender moving branch and the narrow bands of sunlight coming through the leaves. Someone pulled me down to the orchard floor, and coming out of it I dragged myself on my elbows behind a withered clump of trees."
Later, when he sees "one man fall in a heap near the bank of the river among the bullrushes and green fields on its edges . . . I disowned the waters of my youth. My memories of them became a useless luxury . . ." As Bartle gets drawn further and further in, one of the surprises for me is this is not the Iraq of endless deserts that lives in my imagination. The author fought in this area, and the detail has the reader in boots on the ground.
What is done to survive, in Iraq and back home, is one strong theme of this story. Others are what is lost, and what cannot be borne. Decisions are made by these young men that may even be right, but they will shadow them for the rest of their lives.
Show Less
LibraryThing member snat
I've put off writing this review for a few days now while I mulled the book over because something in it just didn't work for me. And this, indeed, is a conundrum, because this novel should have been tailor-made for me. Generally speaking, I'm a fan of contemporary war novels. I don't enjoy them as
And so I read The Yellow Birds, a novel that is haunting, lyrical, and radiates the pain of taking part in and being witness to slaughter. Written by Kevin Powers (himself an Iraq War veteran), the novel is told using first person point of view, giving our main character, John Bartle, his own voice. In chapters that alternate between his service in Iraq and his painful return home, Bartle internally explores his own guilt and emotional agony over the brutal and inexplicable loss of his friend, Murphy, and the role he himself may have played in the incident.
The fragmented, non-linear structure and sometimes broken, redundant syntax are clearly meant to reflect a narrator whose sense of self has been shattered and, in sifting through the pieces, he is exploring his culpability and who he is meant to be after the war is over. There are some poetic lines and descriptions that are emotionally piercing in their perfection.
All of this should have been right up my alley and yet, for most of the novel, I was strangely unaffected by the account. I had an academic appreciation for what he was trying to achieve and a profound respect for his own service and his attempt to capture the experience, but still felt emotionally distant from the work. In part, I think it is because John Bartle's conflict is so internalized that it's difficult to connect because he keeps everyone at a distance after the death of Murphy. I also think that, if we had the scene of Murphy's death earlier in the narrative (Murphy's death is mentioned continuously throughout, but the circumstances are not revealed until the very end), it might have better framed exactly what John is grappling with for the first 3/4 of the novel. However, I think the main factor is this: to date, I have read no finer depictions of the war experience than those found in the works Tim O'Brien.
Now, that may not be fair to compare Powers to O'Brien, but I couldn't help it. Powers's writing takes several pages from the Tim O'Brien playbook. And I'm not saying Powers does this intentionally, but O'Brien's influence on war narratives is so profound that it has simply become one of the primary sources for how we write about and read about war. Fragmented narrative? Check. Shifting, alternating point of view? Check. Soldier goes AWOL? Check. Soldier returns home unable to re-assimilate into society? Check. Poetic, sometimes esoteric language incongruously used to depict the most horrific, base acts of war? Check. Rambling or broken syntax to depict the soldier's mindset? Check.
There were so many similarities that, every time I found one, I couldn't help but think, "Tim O'Brien does that better." And O'Brien allows us to emotionally connect with his characters in a way that Powers never quite achieved for me. I felt sympathy, but not empathy.
I'm keeping the book because I think a re-read in the future might change my perspective. Despite not being in love with the book, I do admire Powers for what he's done here and certainly respect his service to our country. Any novel that shows people the real cost of war is certainly worth the read.
Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder
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escapist entertainment; I take them seriously and I respect them because I want to learn, I want to listen, I want to know what it's like to go to war without actually having to go to war. In some ways, I see it as a duty. If we're going to ask young men and women to fight and die for our country, to risk physical and emotional maiming, we sure as hell need to know precisely what it is we ask of them and honor their service by asking them only to fight when absolutely necessary. Sadly, this hasn't always been our country's policy.And so I read The Yellow Birds, a novel that is haunting, lyrical, and radiates the pain of taking part in and being witness to slaughter. Written by Kevin Powers (himself an Iraq War veteran), the novel is told using first person point of view, giving our main character, John Bartle, his own voice. In chapters that alternate between his service in Iraq and his painful return home, Bartle internally explores his own guilt and emotional agony over the brutal and inexplicable loss of his friend, Murphy, and the role he himself may have played in the incident.
The fragmented, non-linear structure and sometimes broken, redundant syntax are clearly meant to reflect a narrator whose sense of self has been shattered and, in sifting through the pieces, he is exploring his culpability and who he is meant to be after the war is over. There are some poetic lines and descriptions that are emotionally piercing in their perfection.
All of this should have been right up my alley and yet, for most of the novel, I was strangely unaffected by the account. I had an academic appreciation for what he was trying to achieve and a profound respect for his own service and his attempt to capture the experience, but still felt emotionally distant from the work. In part, I think it is because John Bartle's conflict is so internalized that it's difficult to connect because he keeps everyone at a distance after the death of Murphy. I also think that, if we had the scene of Murphy's death earlier in the narrative (Murphy's death is mentioned continuously throughout, but the circumstances are not revealed until the very end), it might have better framed exactly what John is grappling with for the first 3/4 of the novel. However, I think the main factor is this: to date, I have read no finer depictions of the war experience than those found in the works Tim O'Brien.
Now, that may not be fair to compare Powers to O'Brien, but I couldn't help it. Powers's writing takes several pages from the Tim O'Brien playbook. And I'm not saying Powers does this intentionally, but O'Brien's influence on war narratives is so profound that it has simply become one of the primary sources for how we write about and read about war. Fragmented narrative? Check. Shifting, alternating point of view? Check. Soldier goes AWOL? Check. Soldier returns home unable to re-assimilate into society? Check. Poetic, sometimes esoteric language incongruously used to depict the most horrific, base acts of war? Check. Rambling or broken syntax to depict the soldier's mindset? Check.
There were so many similarities that, every time I found one, I couldn't help but think, "Tim O'Brien does that better." And O'Brien allows us to emotionally connect with his characters in a way that Powers never quite achieved for me. I felt sympathy, but not empathy.
I'm keeping the book because I think a re-read in the future might change my perspective. Despite not being in love with the book, I do admire Powers for what he's done here and certainly respect his service to our country. Any novel that shows people the real cost of war is certainly worth the read.
Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder
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LibraryThing member msf59
“You’re nothing, that’s the secret: a uniform in a sea of numbers, a number in a sea of dust.”
Private Bartle and Private Murphy become friends in boot camp and in 2004, deploy to Iraq together. A bond is formed and strengthened further by Bartle’s promise to Murph’s mother that he
In this powerful story, told in lush prose, we follow these soldiers, as they trod through a dangerous and alien landscape, dodging horror and death. We also see the sad return of Private Bartle, as he tries to adjust to life back home, a disconnected existence, filled with guilt, fear and loneliness.
There have been several excellent nonfiction books written on the war experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, but this is the first novel I’ve read, that has captured that “feel” and I give the credit to the author who served as a machine-gunner in Iraq for two years. I think fans of The Things That They Carried, will make a strong connection here.
Here is an example of this book’s potent writing:
“We walked in alleys. Saw the remnants of the enemy where they lay in ambush, pushed them off their weapons with our boots. Rigid and pestilent, the bodies lay bloating in the sun. Some lay at odd angles with backs curved slightly off the ground and others were wrenched at absurd degrees, their decay an echo of some morbid geometry.”
Private Bartle and Private Murphy become friends in boot camp and in 2004, deploy to Iraq together. A bond is formed and strengthened further by Bartle’s promise to Murph’s mother that he
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would make sure that nothing happened to her son. This is never a good idea, especially in a war zone.In this powerful story, told in lush prose, we follow these soldiers, as they trod through a dangerous and alien landscape, dodging horror and death. We also see the sad return of Private Bartle, as he tries to adjust to life back home, a disconnected existence, filled with guilt, fear and loneliness.
There have been several excellent nonfiction books written on the war experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, but this is the first novel I’ve read, that has captured that “feel” and I give the credit to the author who served as a machine-gunner in Iraq for two years. I think fans of The Things That They Carried, will make a strong connection here.
Here is an example of this book’s potent writing:
“We walked in alleys. Saw the remnants of the enemy where they lay in ambush, pushed them off their weapons with our boots. Rigid and pestilent, the bodies lay bloating in the sun. Some lay at odd angles with backs curved slightly off the ground and others were wrenched at absurd degrees, their decay an echo of some morbid geometry.”
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LibraryThing member bcquinnsmom
From its powerful first sentence, "The war tried to kill us in the spring" to the last harrowing page of this novel, Kevin Powers offers his readers haunting images of the war in Iraq. The battles, however, don't stop for army Private John Bartle just because he leaves Iraq; they continue long
The Yellow Birds sets the reader squarely into Bartle's mind as the trauma of the war begins to slowly but steadily consume him. As the novel opens, Bartle, 21 and Murphy, 18, are on a rooftop in the Nineveh province town of Al Tafar. Part of their time is spent obsessing over the numbers of fatalities, viewing each death as "an affirmation" of their own lives. They're fixated on trying not to become casualty number 1000, a number they'd chosen because they couldn't think beyond it, not understanding at the time that "the list was limitless." But the mortars, the IEDs, the body bombs, whizzing bullets and the general randomness of who dies and who lives eventually begin to take their respective tolls, especially on Murphy, who starts to become unhinged, little by little. Looking back on it, Bartle notes that he should have been able to see when Murphy had started moving toward the edge, thinking that if he
"...could figure out where he had begun to slide down the curve of the bell that I could do something about it. But these are subtle shifts, and trying to distinguish them is like trying to measure the degrees of gray when evening comes. It's impossible to identify the cause of anything and I began to see the war as a big joke, for how cruel it was, for how desperately I wanted to measure the particulars of Murph's strange new behavior and trace it back to one moment, to one cause, to one think I would not be guilty of."
In a flash of insight, however, Bartle realizes that the joke was on him as he realizes:
"...how can you measure deviation if you don't know the mean? There was no center in the world. The curves of all our bells were cracked."
What Bartle experiences in his slice of the Iraqi war remains with him as he returns home -- and here is the crux of this novel -- the lesser-known story of all wars, that of the survivors and their difficulty settling back down to a "normal" civilian life once they've made it home.
Powers excels in detailing the psychological tolls of war. He's been to Iraq, so he would know about the randomness and unpredictability of daily life, the missions where the same ground is being taken and retaken, the contemptuous commanders who wish them well and in the same breath remind them that they won't all be coming back, the constant lack of sleep, the pleasure of oblivion in a bottle of Wild Horse whiskey. Bartle lives all of this experience, and can't wait to get home, but even there, his struggles continue as he tries to find some measure of peace in a place where even the noise of a train can be a frightening reminder, in a place where he finds he has become unmoored, set adrift. Well meaning friends, family and other acquaintances make Bartle feel like he's "being eaten from the inside out" when they offer him their thanks and appreciation; what they don't understand is that with each pat on the back he feels increasingly more wretched. Solitude becomes him; in the dark corners of his mind, Bartle retreats into a hellish state of mind:
“You want to fall, that’s all. You think it can’t go on like that. It’s as if your life is a perch on the edge of a cliff and going forward seems impossible, not for a lack of will, but a lack of space. The possibility of another day stands in defiance of the laws of physics. And you can’t go back. So you want to fall, let go, give up, but you can’t. And every breath you take reminds you of that fact. So it goes.”
Placing the reader into Bartle's troubled and very frail but altogether human psyche right away is a great move on the author's part, offering a keen sense of immediacy to the reader as the story unfolds. Bartle's emotions become our emotions at some level, especially in his powerful stream-of-consciousness outpourings and his honesty, which at times just cuts through you like a knife. His darkness is something we want him to escape but at the same time it is so acute that we can't help but to want to explore it further. Powers' beautiful language often heightens these feelings, although truthfully, it often edges close to overpowering what's going on with the characters. There are several places you want to engage more with Bartle's troubled soul less than you want to focus on the author's writing.
I am absolutely fascinated with war fiction, and I'm happy to see novels starting to come out of the Iraqi war experience. If you're looking for an answer to the question of "what's it like over there?" well, you'll find some measure of the experience in The Yellow Birds, but even as the author takes his readers onto the rooftops and into the streets of Al Tafar and into the darkness hiding the unknown, he takes more of a minimal approach to the actual fighting, concentrating more on trauma -- both during and after the war. Sometimes the language is overpowering and cluttered, as if Powers is just dying to give his work more of a poetic flavor, and you end up focusing on the language rather than what he's trying to convey underneath it. However, for the most part, The Yellow Birds is a well-written journey through one man's mind as he tries to battle his ghosts and find the will to continue. Recommended.
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after his return home, where reminders of loss and of his wartime trauma are everywhere. Spanning a six-year period of time, moving back and forth between Iraq and the US (with a brief stint in Germany), the frame for this story is built on a promise Bartle made to the mother of a friend and fellow soldier named Daniel Murphy, that he'd bring him back home to her. Even though he outwardly assures his sergeant that the promise wasn't a "big deal," and that "he was just trying to make her feel better," inwardly, Bartle takes it very seriously. Reflecting back on not only his Iraq experience but what happened to him afterward, Bartle's story unfolds little by little, growing darker at each step.The Yellow Birds sets the reader squarely into Bartle's mind as the trauma of the war begins to slowly but steadily consume him. As the novel opens, Bartle, 21 and Murphy, 18, are on a rooftop in the Nineveh province town of Al Tafar. Part of their time is spent obsessing over the numbers of fatalities, viewing each death as "an affirmation" of their own lives. They're fixated on trying not to become casualty number 1000, a number they'd chosen because they couldn't think beyond it, not understanding at the time that "the list was limitless." But the mortars, the IEDs, the body bombs, whizzing bullets and the general randomness of who dies and who lives eventually begin to take their respective tolls, especially on Murphy, who starts to become unhinged, little by little. Looking back on it, Bartle notes that he should have been able to see when Murphy had started moving toward the edge, thinking that if he
"...could figure out where he had begun to slide down the curve of the bell that I could do something about it. But these are subtle shifts, and trying to distinguish them is like trying to measure the degrees of gray when evening comes. It's impossible to identify the cause of anything and I began to see the war as a big joke, for how cruel it was, for how desperately I wanted to measure the particulars of Murph's strange new behavior and trace it back to one moment, to one cause, to one think I would not be guilty of."
In a flash of insight, however, Bartle realizes that the joke was on him as he realizes:
"...how can you measure deviation if you don't know the mean? There was no center in the world. The curves of all our bells were cracked."
What Bartle experiences in his slice of the Iraqi war remains with him as he returns home -- and here is the crux of this novel -- the lesser-known story of all wars, that of the survivors and their difficulty settling back down to a "normal" civilian life once they've made it home.
Powers excels in detailing the psychological tolls of war. He's been to Iraq, so he would know about the randomness and unpredictability of daily life, the missions where the same ground is being taken and retaken, the contemptuous commanders who wish them well and in the same breath remind them that they won't all be coming back, the constant lack of sleep, the pleasure of oblivion in a bottle of Wild Horse whiskey. Bartle lives all of this experience, and can't wait to get home, but even there, his struggles continue as he tries to find some measure of peace in a place where even the noise of a train can be a frightening reminder, in a place where he finds he has become unmoored, set adrift. Well meaning friends, family and other acquaintances make Bartle feel like he's "being eaten from the inside out" when they offer him their thanks and appreciation; what they don't understand is that with each pat on the back he feels increasingly more wretched. Solitude becomes him; in the dark corners of his mind, Bartle retreats into a hellish state of mind:
“You want to fall, that’s all. You think it can’t go on like that. It’s as if your life is a perch on the edge of a cliff and going forward seems impossible, not for a lack of will, but a lack of space. The possibility of another day stands in defiance of the laws of physics. And you can’t go back. So you want to fall, let go, give up, but you can’t. And every breath you take reminds you of that fact. So it goes.”
Placing the reader into Bartle's troubled and very frail but altogether human psyche right away is a great move on the author's part, offering a keen sense of immediacy to the reader as the story unfolds. Bartle's emotions become our emotions at some level, especially in his powerful stream-of-consciousness outpourings and his honesty, which at times just cuts through you like a knife. His darkness is something we want him to escape but at the same time it is so acute that we can't help but to want to explore it further. Powers' beautiful language often heightens these feelings, although truthfully, it often edges close to overpowering what's going on with the characters. There are several places you want to engage more with Bartle's troubled soul less than you want to focus on the author's writing.
I am absolutely fascinated with war fiction, and I'm happy to see novels starting to come out of the Iraqi war experience. If you're looking for an answer to the question of "what's it like over there?" well, you'll find some measure of the experience in The Yellow Birds, but even as the author takes his readers onto the rooftops and into the streets of Al Tafar and into the darkness hiding the unknown, he takes more of a minimal approach to the actual fighting, concentrating more on trauma -- both during and after the war. Sometimes the language is overpowering and cluttered, as if Powers is just dying to give his work more of a poetic flavor, and you end up focusing on the language rather than what he's trying to convey underneath it. However, for the most part, The Yellow Birds is a well-written journey through one man's mind as he tries to battle his ghosts and find the will to continue. Recommended.
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LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
I was really looking forward to this read, and for a lot of reasons. I've been impressed with a lot of recent literature by veterans, and I love Tim O'Brien's work; it seemed like this would be a great fit for my tastes... And, yet.
At some points, there were passages that struck me, but even in
I wanted to like it, for a lot of reasons. I really did. But, in the end, I probably wouldn't recommend it. I also wouldn't read more of the writer's fiction, though I could see reading his poetry if I came across it.
At some points, there were passages that struck me, but even in
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those moments, this felt very much like an overly-formed, one-size-fits-all, and too carefully developed MFA book. The style and the detachment in it felt like what academia thinks a war-book should look like, and wants it to look like. It felt like someone learning to write well in order to write a 'great American book' that could win awards...even if readers didn't enjoy it all that much, and that was a real problem for me. Maybe it's because I have read so much war-related literature, including books connected to the most recent wars and Iraq, or perhaps it's because the structure felt too artificial to be really engaging, but one way or another, I was hugely disappointed. It felt very literary, and smartly done... but not all that powerful as a result. It had its moments, but in the end, I have to say that it left me feeling sort of cold. And, I'm sure, there are academics out there who'd say, 'Yes! That's how you're supposed to feel after you read a book like this! That's the point!' Perhaps it is--in fact, I imagine it is, and that's why this is the way it is and has been so widely promoted, but honestly, it left me wanting much more from its pages.I wanted to like it, for a lot of reasons. I really did. But, in the end, I probably wouldn't recommend it. I also wouldn't read more of the writer's fiction, though I could see reading his poetry if I came across it.
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LibraryThing member TheLostEntwife
This is not a pretty story. It's stark, harsh, filled with horror, and made me, honestly, want to yell and scream at someone - anyone. And the thing is, I think that's the emotions it was supposed to evoke in me.
In The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, in less than 250 pages, we're taken on a journey.
I honestly don't know how to review this book. As far as a review goes, let me just say that this is a seriously depressing book. It's about war, and it does not paint a pretty picture. There's no soldier playing guitar for a bunch of little refugee kids here. There's no parties, no laughter, no fun and games behind the lines as everyone tries to ease up on the stress level. This is what happens when hope has been not just taken away, but stomped under the feet of a commanding officer and then forced into the rotting guts of a dead enemy. Get the picture? I hope so - because I kind of wish I'd had someone to pound that into me.
After reading The Yellow Birds I was in a stupor for the rest of the day... on into the next day. There was an analogy Kevin Powers talked about - how rushing into battle is like that moment before you collide with another car in an accident. There's that same feeling of helplessness - the knowing that you may very well die in a mere second. I had a horrific accident almost one year ago - a driver pulled out in front of me, running his stop sign, and I collided with him. I was going 52 mph. That moment before impact felt like years, and in those years I had a thousand (at least) thoughts run through my head. But first and foremost? I didn't want to die. I wasn't ready. And yet I think so very little about the soldiers we have out there living that moment every single day of their lives - both active duty and inactive.
I don't want to get political in this review, I just want to say that it drove its point home to me. I don't know what it's like to be a soldier in war - and frankly I know that I wouldn't have the guts to do it. But I can educate myself about it, and that's what this story has done for me.
In The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, in less than 250 pages, we're taken on a journey.
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A journey to war - in all it's brutal, killing glory. This is a story about two Privates - each with their own path in life and death, and the hell each will leave as their legacy. I honestly don't know how to review this book. As far as a review goes, let me just say that this is a seriously depressing book. It's about war, and it does not paint a pretty picture. There's no soldier playing guitar for a bunch of little refugee kids here. There's no parties, no laughter, no fun and games behind the lines as everyone tries to ease up on the stress level. This is what happens when hope has been not just taken away, but stomped under the feet of a commanding officer and then forced into the rotting guts of a dead enemy. Get the picture? I hope so - because I kind of wish I'd had someone to pound that into me.
After reading The Yellow Birds I was in a stupor for the rest of the day... on into the next day. There was an analogy Kevin Powers talked about - how rushing into battle is like that moment before you collide with another car in an accident. There's that same feeling of helplessness - the knowing that you may very well die in a mere second. I had a horrific accident almost one year ago - a driver pulled out in front of me, running his stop sign, and I collided with him. I was going 52 mph. That moment before impact felt like years, and in those years I had a thousand (at least) thoughts run through my head. But first and foremost? I didn't want to die. I wasn't ready. And yet I think so very little about the soldiers we have out there living that moment every single day of their lives - both active duty and inactive.
I don't want to get political in this review, I just want to say that it drove its point home to me. I don't know what it's like to be a soldier in war - and frankly I know that I wouldn't have the guts to do it. But I can educate myself about it, and that's what this story has done for me.
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LibraryThing member nomadreader
The basics: Set in Afghanistan in 2004 and the months after, The Yellow Birds tells the story of two soldiers, Private Bartle and Private Murphy, who meet at training camp.
My thoughts: This novel's opening chapter is a visceral depiction of war. As I read it on the bus, I found myself crying and
Bartle is 21, while Murphy is 18. As I read, I had to remember how large of a difference it is between age 18 and 21, particularly when you're killing to try to stay alive. Their age difference plays into the power dynamics of their friendship and adds a wrinkled layer to the events of Murphy's death to which Powers slowly builds up.
Favorite passage: "Half of memory is imagination anyway."
The verdict: The Yellow Birds is a quiet, haunting, and deeply moving depiction of the two soldiers and the impact of war. It's astonishingly well-paced and gets better as it goes on, leading up to one of the best endings I've read this year.
My thoughts: This novel's opening chapter is a visceral depiction of war. As I read it on the bus, I found myself crying and
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trying to breathe deeply to calm myself. I was grateful when the time shifted in the next chapter. Powers continues this powerful alternation between the war in Afghanistan and Bartle's attempts to deal with its aftermath. The reader learns early on that Murphy doesn't survive the war, yet the tension leading up to the how and why of his death is a literary marvel. I was eager to begin a chapter away from the war, but as the novel progressed and Bartle struggled, I soon found the Afghanistan chapters less emotionally challenging.Bartle is 21, while Murphy is 18. As I read, I had to remember how large of a difference it is between age 18 and 21, particularly when you're killing to try to stay alive. Their age difference plays into the power dynamics of their friendship and adds a wrinkled layer to the events of Murphy's death to which Powers slowly builds up.
Favorite passage: "Half of memory is imagination anyway."
The verdict: The Yellow Birds is a quiet, haunting, and deeply moving depiction of the two soldiers and the impact of war. It's astonishingly well-paced and gets better as it goes on, leading up to one of the best endings I've read this year.
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LibraryThing member TimBazzett
Kevin Powers' much-talked-about first novel, THE YELLOW BIRDS, is a very disturbing look at the Iraq War, variously referred to by its narrator as "a shitty little war" and "our little pest of a war." The story is told by Bartle, John. An odd choice of names perhaps, unless you are familiar with
Novels of war seldom end well, and THE YELLOW BIRDS does not deviate from that rule. Powers tells his tale artfully, with a sure sense of pacing and plot. But the characters here are what get your attention and hold it. There is Sterling, the battle-hardened veteran sergeant, who is only a few years older than Bartle. If one wonders about his importance or significance to his young disciples, there is an early hint in the following scene -
"He waved us to him and took a piece of pound cake from the cargo pocket on his trousers ... He broke the dry cake into three pieces. 'Take this,' he said. 'Eat.'"
And again, much later in the book -
"And Sterling? The truth is he cared nothing for himself ... His life had been entirely contingent, like a body in orbit, only seen on account of the way it wobbles around its star. Everything he'd done had been a response to a pre-existing expectation. He's been able to do only one thing for himself, truly for himself, and it had been the last act of his short, disordered life."
And then there's 'Murph,' a boy really, even in his smallness. He is an innocent, a fugitive from a Virginia mining town, a diminutive Daniel in the merciless and dangerous lions' den of war, but unlike the Biblical figure, there is no miracle to save him. Murphy's Law rules.
But it is the narrator, Bartle, who will remain in your memory the longest. The scrivener, trying futilely to make sense of it all, he writes it down -
"... really, cowardice got you into this mess because you wanted to be a man and people made fun of you and pushed you around in the cafeteria and the hallways in high school because you liked to read books and poems sometimes and they'd call you f*g and really deep down you know you went because you wanted to be a man and that's never gonna happen now and you're too much of a coward to be a man and get it over with ..."
Despairing, Bartle watches his small friend Murph, unravel, give in, succumb to the sheer awfulness of the constant killing and death that surrounds him; feels responsible, yet helpless. Even his Sterling leader can't help them. In the end I could only think of Melville's Bartleby, surrendering to the pointlessness of his work and refusing to continue with it, telling his employer only: "I would prefer not to."
Ah, Bartle. "Ah humanity!"
The early buzz, the praise, the heaped superlatives - they are all well deserved. THE YELLOW BIRDS is indeed an important work, full of truths about men and war. Bravo, Mr. Powers.
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Herman Melville's 19th century tale, "Bartleby the Scrivener." A 'scrivener' is one who writes, or records things. Young John Bartle, a damaged veteran of the Iraq war, is living in a cabin in the Blue Ridge mountains and is recording his own story, as well as that of his even younger (18) ill-fated army comrade, Daniel Murphy.Novels of war seldom end well, and THE YELLOW BIRDS does not deviate from that rule. Powers tells his tale artfully, with a sure sense of pacing and plot. But the characters here are what get your attention and hold it. There is Sterling, the battle-hardened veteran sergeant, who is only a few years older than Bartle. If one wonders about his importance or significance to his young disciples, there is an early hint in the following scene -
"He waved us to him and took a piece of pound cake from the cargo pocket on his trousers ... He broke the dry cake into three pieces. 'Take this,' he said. 'Eat.'"
And again, much later in the book -
"And Sterling? The truth is he cared nothing for himself ... His life had been entirely contingent, like a body in orbit, only seen on account of the way it wobbles around its star. Everything he'd done had been a response to a pre-existing expectation. He's been able to do only one thing for himself, truly for himself, and it had been the last act of his short, disordered life."
And then there's 'Murph,' a boy really, even in his smallness. He is an innocent, a fugitive from a Virginia mining town, a diminutive Daniel in the merciless and dangerous lions' den of war, but unlike the Biblical figure, there is no miracle to save him. Murphy's Law rules.
But it is the narrator, Bartle, who will remain in your memory the longest. The scrivener, trying futilely to make sense of it all, he writes it down -
"... really, cowardice got you into this mess because you wanted to be a man and people made fun of you and pushed you around in the cafeteria and the hallways in high school because you liked to read books and poems sometimes and they'd call you f*g and really deep down you know you went because you wanted to be a man and that's never gonna happen now and you're too much of a coward to be a man and get it over with ..."
Despairing, Bartle watches his small friend Murph, unravel, give in, succumb to the sheer awfulness of the constant killing and death that surrounds him; feels responsible, yet helpless. Even his Sterling leader can't help them. In the end I could only think of Melville's Bartleby, surrendering to the pointlessness of his work and refusing to continue with it, telling his employer only: "I would prefer not to."
Ah, Bartle. "Ah humanity!"
The early buzz, the praise, the heaped superlatives - they are all well deserved. THE YELLOW BIRDS is indeed an important work, full of truths about men and war. Bravo, Mr. Powers.
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LibraryThing member lit_chick
“Grief is a practical mechanism, and we only grieved those we knew. All others who died in Al Tafar were part of the landscape, as if something had sown seeds in that city that made bodies rise from the earth, in the dirt or up through the pavement like flowers after a frost, dried and withering
In Al Tafar, Nineveh Province, Iraq, Privates Bartle and Murphy, 21-years-old and 18-years-old respectively, battle under the command of Sergeant Sterling, not much older than they. The young men, both from Georgia, met at Fort Benning – Bartle recalls promising Murphy’s mother that he would bring her son home alive, and Sargeant Sterling advising the young solider that he wanted him to “get in Bartle’s back pocket and I want you to stay there." (Ch 2) As the novel opens, the platoon has launched (another) bloody battle for Al Tafar; and Bartle observes that his friend has “grown old in the ten months I’d known him.” (Ch 2) In the endless days that follow, the two will do everything they can to protect one another. But only Bartle will go home to the US – a fate perhaps even less kind than death: "My missing him became a grave that could not be filled or leveled, just a faded blemish in a field and a damn poor substitute for grief, as graves so often are.” (Ch 7)
The Yellow Birds is a powerful, necessary read – an unforgettable account of friendship and loss, and a stark portrayal of the brutality and desperation of war, and of its unimaginable after-effects. Powers, an Iraq War veteran, unmistakably draws on first hand experience. My only criticism of the novel is that the prose occasionally tends to the too-poetic (Powers is also a poet), which I found created a discordant effect between language and subject. The novel has been hailed as the All Quiet on the Western Front of the Middle East. And, while I personally prefer Remarque’s novel, I think the importance of writing about the soldiers’ experience of Iraq cannot be overestimated. Highly recommended.
“Now I know: All pain is the same. Only the details are different.” (Ch 7)
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under a cold, bright sun." (Ch 6) In Al Tafar, Nineveh Province, Iraq, Privates Bartle and Murphy, 21-years-old and 18-years-old respectively, battle under the command of Sergeant Sterling, not much older than they. The young men, both from Georgia, met at Fort Benning – Bartle recalls promising Murphy’s mother that he would bring her son home alive, and Sargeant Sterling advising the young solider that he wanted him to “get in Bartle’s back pocket and I want you to stay there." (Ch 2) As the novel opens, the platoon has launched (another) bloody battle for Al Tafar; and Bartle observes that his friend has “grown old in the ten months I’d known him.” (Ch 2) In the endless days that follow, the two will do everything they can to protect one another. But only Bartle will go home to the US – a fate perhaps even less kind than death: "My missing him became a grave that could not be filled or leveled, just a faded blemish in a field and a damn poor substitute for grief, as graves so often are.” (Ch 7)
The Yellow Birds is a powerful, necessary read – an unforgettable account of friendship and loss, and a stark portrayal of the brutality and desperation of war, and of its unimaginable after-effects. Powers, an Iraq War veteran, unmistakably draws on first hand experience. My only criticism of the novel is that the prose occasionally tends to the too-poetic (Powers is also a poet), which I found created a discordant effect between language and subject. The novel has been hailed as the All Quiet on the Western Front of the Middle East. And, while I personally prefer Remarque’s novel, I think the importance of writing about the soldiers’ experience of Iraq cannot be overestimated. Highly recommended.
“Now I know: All pain is the same. Only the details are different.” (Ch 7)
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LibraryThing member freelancer_frank
This is a book about growing up. It features the following hallmarks of adolescence: 1. The point of view is entirely subjective to the point of solipsism. 2. Every sentence and event appears to be forced with loaded 'significance' that rings false. 3. The deployment of a random narrative with
The various paean's to a lost friend 'Murph' felt cliched and there was no real motive given to the reader as to why Murph's loss should have as much relevance as it does to the narrator. The use of fractured narrative to demonstrate a fractured state of mind also felt tired and worn.
There is little or no insight here into the war in the Middle East, soldiering, technique etc...
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occasional stabs at mundane and inexperienced insight. These might be excused as aspects of character except that they belong to the narrative. The characters are featureless.The various paean's to a lost friend 'Murph' felt cliched and there was no real motive given to the reader as to why Murph's loss should have as much relevance as it does to the narrator. The use of fractured narrative to demonstrate a fractured state of mind also felt tired and worn.
There is little or no insight here into the war in the Middle East, soldiering, technique etc...
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LibraryThing member muddyboy
If you enjoy beating your head with a hammer you will like this book. I have been reading for over fifty years and I have never read such a bitter and depressing book. It is the story of an Iraq war veteran and half the book was about his war experiences and half is about his attempt to adjust once
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he gets home. I was relieved when I was done with it. I have read many books over the years about war and most by veterans but never one as dark as this. The author could make a beautiful sunny day sound vile and disgusting. Not that it wasn't well written, it was but don't expect one moment of lightness or humor. These soldiers never cut up or joke. You better have a strong constitution if you tackle this one. Show Less
LibraryThing member michelle.mount
I usually rate a book high when the voice is real and original. Kevin Powers has a georgous voice. Also he has an MFA in poetry which shines through and the book itself reads more like a painting which is a nice change of pace from the plot driven recounts of books like Hunger Games that are so
He beautifuly depicts an eroding grip on the world that so often happens after trauma. No where are the words "post traumatic stress syndrome" mentioned but that's the magic of poetry.
Gritty enough to taste the blood and desert sand, pretty enough to hear the call to prayer over the red desert sunset
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vogue.He beautifuly depicts an eroding grip on the world that so often happens after trauma. No where are the words "post traumatic stress syndrome" mentioned but that's the magic of poetry.
Gritty enough to taste the blood and desert sand, pretty enough to hear the call to prayer over the red desert sunset
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LibraryThing member edgeworth
The Yellow Birds is the debut novel from Kevin Powers, a former American soldier who served in Iraq in 2004 and 2005. Like many first novels, it’s partly autobiographical, and writing it clearly served as a healing process for some of the things Powers did and saw while at war. It can sometimes
The novel is narrated by John Bartle, a stand-in for Powers, and features a back-and-forth chronology that jumps between the Bartle’s time in Nineveh Province and his home back in Virginia (with a brief interlude on the way home, in Germany). Bartle’s best friend in Iraq – or maybe they were just forced together by circumstance – is Murph, a 19-year-old private. We learn early on that Murph will not survive, which is a problem for Bartle, since he promised Murph’s mother he’d bring him back safe. At first it appears that this is all that haunts Bartle back home, until it’s gradually implied that there’s more to it than that – specifically, about halfway through the book, when Bartle’s mother mentions that the military’s Criminal Investigation Division is looking for him.
The Yellow Birds has been critically acclaimed, and it deserves to be. Anderson is a gifted writer with a talent for beautiful prose, and the novel is littered with insights that could only come from somebody who has genuinely been through hell and lived to talk about it. That’s what The Yellow Birds is ultimately about – survival, not death. After all, more American soldiers in Iraq lived than died, but the people who came back certainly weren’t the same ones who went there. (In some years, more US troops have died from suicide than combat.) Throughout much of the book, Bartle expects to die, and seems bewildered when he doesn’t. He comes back to America a scarred and broken man with a terrible secret.
Some have called it the definitive Iraq War novel, which I disagree with. It’s too early for there to be one, for a start, but in any case The Yellow Birds isn’t really a novel about war – it’s a novel about coming home after being at war. In that category, at least, it’s a brilliant accomplishment, and I’ll be very interested to see what Kevin Powers writes next.
I would leave it at that, but there’s one more thing I want to discuss. Since it involves the ending of the plot, I’m placing it below a spoiler warning, and I do strongly recommend you read this book, so don’t peek:
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS, AVERT YOUR EYES
What bothered me about the ending was that Bartle is far, far more wracked with guilt about what he and Sterling did with Murph’s body than he is about the fact that Sterling casually murdered the cartwright to cover it up. Robbing a mother of the closure of her son’s corpse is a dreadful thing, but killing somebody who didn’t have to die is far worse. What about his mother? What about his family?
This would be understandable if Bartle had been portrayed as a gung-ho f*ck-em-up GI Joe figure who only cares about Americans and doesn’t give a flying f*ck about “hajjis,” but he wasn’t. There are multiple points in the book where he expresses guilt and remorse about killing Iraqi insurgents in the heat of battle – yet he expresses no qualms about being accessory to the murder of an Iraqi civilian in cold blood. Even if he is understandably more upset about an action which affected those he personally knew, and which he had a slightly more direct hand in, and which he had to suffer through the ramifications of, I still found it odd and out of character for not a single sentence to be expressed in remorse about the killing of the cartwright. The fact that the scene easily could have been written without the cartwright only adds to my confusion. Powers deliberately included this casual shooting, but I can’t figure out why; it seems to be at odds with the rest of the novel.
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be hard to tell where the autobiography ends and the novel begins, until it starts to go down some dark places towards the end.The novel is narrated by John Bartle, a stand-in for Powers, and features a back-and-forth chronology that jumps between the Bartle’s time in Nineveh Province and his home back in Virginia (with a brief interlude on the way home, in Germany). Bartle’s best friend in Iraq – or maybe they were just forced together by circumstance – is Murph, a 19-year-old private. We learn early on that Murph will not survive, which is a problem for Bartle, since he promised Murph’s mother he’d bring him back safe. At first it appears that this is all that haunts Bartle back home, until it’s gradually implied that there’s more to it than that – specifically, about halfway through the book, when Bartle’s mother mentions that the military’s Criminal Investigation Division is looking for him.
The Yellow Birds has been critically acclaimed, and it deserves to be. Anderson is a gifted writer with a talent for beautiful prose, and the novel is littered with insights that could only come from somebody who has genuinely been through hell and lived to talk about it. That’s what The Yellow Birds is ultimately about – survival, not death. After all, more American soldiers in Iraq lived than died, but the people who came back certainly weren’t the same ones who went there. (In some years, more US troops have died from suicide than combat.) Throughout much of the book, Bartle expects to die, and seems bewildered when he doesn’t. He comes back to America a scarred and broken man with a terrible secret.
Some have called it the definitive Iraq War novel, which I disagree with. It’s too early for there to be one, for a start, but in any case The Yellow Birds isn’t really a novel about war – it’s a novel about coming home after being at war. In that category, at least, it’s a brilliant accomplishment, and I’ll be very interested to see what Kevin Powers writes next.
I would leave it at that, but there’s one more thing I want to discuss. Since it involves the ending of the plot, I’m placing it below a spoiler warning, and I do strongly recommend you read this book, so don’t peek:
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS, AVERT YOUR EYES
What bothered me about the ending was that Bartle is far, far more wracked with guilt about what he and Sterling did with Murph’s body than he is about the fact that Sterling casually murdered the cartwright to cover it up. Robbing a mother of the closure of her son’s corpse is a dreadful thing, but killing somebody who didn’t have to die is far worse. What about his mother? What about his family?
This would be understandable if Bartle had been portrayed as a gung-ho f*ck-em-up GI Joe figure who only cares about Americans and doesn’t give a flying f*ck about “hajjis,” but he wasn’t. There are multiple points in the book where he expresses guilt and remorse about killing Iraqi insurgents in the heat of battle – yet he expresses no qualms about being accessory to the murder of an Iraqi civilian in cold blood. Even if he is understandably more upset about an action which affected those he personally knew, and which he had a slightly more direct hand in, and which he had to suffer through the ramifications of, I still found it odd and out of character for not a single sentence to be expressed in remorse about the killing of the cartwright. The fact that the scene easily could have been written without the cartwright only adds to my confusion. Powers deliberately included this casual shooting, but I can’t figure out why; it seems to be at odds with the rest of the novel.
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LibraryThing member tangledthread
Kevin Powers states that this book was written in response to the frequently posed question, "What was it like over there?"
The narrative takes place from 2004 through 2009 of the Iraq war. There are three main characters named: Pvt. John Bartle, the 21 year old narrator. Pvt. Daniel Murphy, the 18
The narrative jumps back and forth in time and location reflecting the fragmentary nature of Bartle's memories: “like putting a puzzle together from behind: the shapes familiar, the picture quickly fading, the muted tan of the cardboard backing a tease at wholeness and completion.”
The writing style is complex and sometimes difficult to digest on the first reading. The Tigris River in Iraq and the James River in Virginia are geographically and symbolically present in the story.
Upon finishing the story, I felt I had an answer to the originally posed question: It was extremely impersonal, frightening, and confusing. An experience for which no one could be prepared.
The narrative takes place from 2004 through 2009 of the Iraq war. There are three main characters named: Pvt. John Bartle, the 21 year old narrator. Pvt. Daniel Murphy, the 18
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year old whom Bartle promised his mother, LaDonna, that he would bring home. And Sgt. Sterling who seems to fit the description of his name...at least in the beginning of the book. Other characters in the book are referred to only by their function, not by name. Yet most of the trees, flora and fauna are named by their species both in the desert and in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S.The narrative jumps back and forth in time and location reflecting the fragmentary nature of Bartle's memories: “like putting a puzzle together from behind: the shapes familiar, the picture quickly fading, the muted tan of the cardboard backing a tease at wholeness and completion.”
The writing style is complex and sometimes difficult to digest on the first reading. The Tigris River in Iraq and the James River in Virginia are geographically and symbolically present in the story.
Upon finishing the story, I felt I had an answer to the originally posed question: It was extremely impersonal, frightening, and confusing. An experience for which no one could be prepared.
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LibraryThing member jasonlf
A very moving account of the Iraq war and its aftermath for an emotionally wounded private. Much of it feels like a standard fare war novel: the naive privates, the tough-but-fair battle-hardened sergeant, the starched uniform colonels who drop in to give a Patton-like speech posing for the
The Iraq scenes are all about the battle for Al Tafar, they give no big picture view of the war or why the battle is being fought, they just begin with soldiers advancing on the town and continue through some patrols and some time at the FOB--without any climatic battles, context, or anything else. At one point we're informed that every spring the Americans leave/lose Al Tafar, and then every fall they take it back again.
These Iraq scenes alternate with scenes in Germany and America, mostly after Private Bartle leaves the war but in a few cases before the war. These depict the emotional damage it did to him.
What makes The Yellow Birds increasingly moving and differentiates it from the standard-fare cliches that dominate in the beginning, is the harrowing focus on a few individual deaths--and especially on one particular death of his best friend in the squad that is revealed in the beginning of the book but that we learn more and more about over the course of the book.
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cameras, and the gallows humor about alarm warning bells that only go off after the mortar attacks are over.The Iraq scenes are all about the battle for Al Tafar, they give no big picture view of the war or why the battle is being fought, they just begin with soldiers advancing on the town and continue through some patrols and some time at the FOB--without any climatic battles, context, or anything else. At one point we're informed that every spring the Americans leave/lose Al Tafar, and then every fall they take it back again.
These Iraq scenes alternate with scenes in Germany and America, mostly after Private Bartle leaves the war but in a few cases before the war. These depict the emotional damage it did to him.
What makes The Yellow Birds increasingly moving and differentiates it from the standard-fare cliches that dominate in the beginning, is the harrowing focus on a few individual deaths--and especially on one particular death of his best friend in the squad that is revealed in the beginning of the book but that we learn more and more about over the course of the book.
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LibraryThing member mahsdad
An excellent, but harrowing story of a soldier's experiences in Iraq and how he deals with the aftermath. Powers jumps back and forth between time in country, training and after at home to setup the trauma that the characters go thru and the PTSD that the narrator experiences. Excellent read.
What
What
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happened? What f*ck*ng happened? That's not even the question, I thought. How is that the question? How do you answer the unanswerable? To say what happened, the mere facts, the disposition of events in time, would come to seem like a kind of treachery. The dominoes of moments, lined up symmetrically, then tumbling backward against the hazy and unsure push of cause, showed only that a fall is every object's destiny. It is not enough to say what happened. Everything happened. Everything fell Show Less
LibraryThing member LaurenAileen
I got this book at BEA and decided to read it first because I had seen the media blitz both there and on Shelf Awareness. Despite the author's poetic writing style and his flowing descriptions, this book describes horrors of war that are disturbing and gruesome. Bartle, the narrator, is asked by
I was taken aback by the fact that while this is a novel, there are so many people experiencing these same things. The story continues past the point where Bartle is released from duty, living a life taken over by PTSD- waking up floating in rivers, seeing signs of a childhood he can't quite remember, and drinking himself into a hole. While the book, a debut novel, isn't the most perfectly-written piece of literature (at times, he seems to purposely be describing something horrifying in a beautiful, poetic way, which can seem contrived for "shock value"), the book is still powerful and well worth the read. It will make you look at war (and soldiers) in a different light.
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his Sargeant to keep a watch on the new soldier, Murphy. The two become inseparable during the war, while both slowly slipping into madness over the things they've had to both see and do.I was taken aback by the fact that while this is a novel, there are so many people experiencing these same things. The story continues past the point where Bartle is released from duty, living a life taken over by PTSD- waking up floating in rivers, seeing signs of a childhood he can't quite remember, and drinking himself into a hole. While the book, a debut novel, isn't the most perfectly-written piece of literature (at times, he seems to purposely be describing something horrifying in a beautiful, poetic way, which can seem contrived for "shock value"), the book is still powerful and well worth the read. It will make you look at war (and soldiers) in a different light.
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LibraryThing member PilgrimJess
"There is a sharp distinction between what is remembered, what is told and what is true."
The narrator of is a twenty-one year old US private, John Bartle, who befriends an even younger soldier, Murphy, and makes an impulsive promise to Murphy’s mother before heading out to war in Iraq.
The plot
Powers mixes poetry with prose to give a truly stylish rendition of the horror of war where it's young participants are constantly fearful and on alert, where nerves are continually on edge. The power in the writing is that the author manages to juxtapose the awful with the mundane.
“I shot him and he slumped over behind the wall. He was shot again by someone else and the bullet went through his chest and ricocheted, breaking a potted plant hanging from a window above the courtyard.”
The conjunction with a bullet ending a man’s life and a potted plant is typical of Powers's writing style. However, I also had a few minor issues with it. I felt that a little judicious editing would have helped, at times I felt that it went a little overboard not just about the brutality that these young men and women faced daily but also the mis-information that was being fed both to them and to the American public as a whole, nor was I totally convinced that the momentous decision that Bartle and his Sergeant make was a strictly necessary one even though I understand the reasoning behind it by two brutalised minds. Personally I felt that Powers was trying to batter the reader into submission rather than let them come to their own conclusions.
Maybe I'm being a bit harsh. Perhaps the real problem that history tells us this was a war with no real definitive winner one way or the other but it could also be that it was simply too recent, too close to home (my brother served out there with the British Army). Or it could be a simple case of poor timing given what is happening in the Ukraine at present and its the 40th anniversary of my own experiences in the Falklands.
All the same for a first novel its a remarkable piece of writing that deserves to be widely read but oddly I feel that if it had been written in memoir form rather than a novel it would have been even better.
The narrator of is a twenty-one year old US private, John Bartle, who befriends an even younger soldier, Murphy, and makes an impulsive promise to Murphy’s mother before heading out to war in Iraq.
The plot
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spans six years and is told retrospectively mixing two story lines in alternating chapters. The first is Bartle’s and Murphy’s experiences in Al Tafar in 2004 whilst the other is Bartle’s return home to Richmond, Virginia, as he tries to adjust to life after Iraq, and what happened to Murphy and his own role in the aftermath.Powers mixes poetry with prose to give a truly stylish rendition of the horror of war where it's young participants are constantly fearful and on alert, where nerves are continually on edge. The power in the writing is that the author manages to juxtapose the awful with the mundane.
“I shot him and he slumped over behind the wall. He was shot again by someone else and the bullet went through his chest and ricocheted, breaking a potted plant hanging from a window above the courtyard.”
The conjunction with a bullet ending a man’s life and a potted plant is typical of Powers's writing style. However, I also had a few minor issues with it. I felt that a little judicious editing would have helped, at times I felt that it went a little overboard not just about the brutality that these young men and women faced daily but also the mis-information that was being fed both to them and to the American public as a whole, nor was I totally convinced that the momentous decision that Bartle and his Sergeant make was a strictly necessary one even though I understand the reasoning behind it by two brutalised minds. Personally I felt that Powers was trying to batter the reader into submission rather than let them come to their own conclusions.
Maybe I'm being a bit harsh. Perhaps the real problem that history tells us this was a war with no real definitive winner one way or the other but it could also be that it was simply too recent, too close to home (my brother served out there with the British Army). Or it could be a simple case of poor timing given what is happening in the Ukraine at present and its the 40th anniversary of my own experiences in the Falklands.
All the same for a first novel its a remarkable piece of writing that deserves to be widely read but oddly I feel that if it had been written in memoir form rather than a novel it would have been even better.
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LibraryThing member LovingLit
John has been to war. A modern war. He has returned home to the States and is not settling in well. He tells his story in pieces, a bit from now and a bit from the past. He tells his story very well in that he isnt just telling you what happened but exactly how he felt, and how it felt to be there
I was under the mistaken impression that "modern" wars were more sterile, less dirty than old wars. That people pushed buttons to release bombs rather than walking the streets killing people. This book put me right, and I wont have to wonder why there is such a wall between returned soldiers and the people they return to. Just as with WWI and WWII, the situations these soldiers have been in are just too soul-destroying to tell their friends back home about over a coffee. Their guilt over what they witnessed and did lives on, and the adoration (if any) they get from a grateful public doesn't sit well.
This is a lovely, yet gruesome, account of a soldiers time in Iraq. And on top of all that there is also a storyline that keeps you guessing a bit, and which makes it very exciting to read. The only beef I have is the jumping about from time to time, it wasn't quite right for me
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seeing and doing the things they had to. The language is poetic and beautiful, the descriptions grab you and shake you. I was under the mistaken impression that "modern" wars were more sterile, less dirty than old wars. That people pushed buttons to release bombs rather than walking the streets killing people. This book put me right, and I wont have to wonder why there is such a wall between returned soldiers and the people they return to. Just as with WWI and WWII, the situations these soldiers have been in are just too soul-destroying to tell their friends back home about over a coffee. Their guilt over what they witnessed and did lives on, and the adoration (if any) they get from a grateful public doesn't sit well.
This is a lovely, yet gruesome, account of a soldiers time in Iraq. And on top of all that there is also a storyline that keeps you guessing a bit, and which makes it very exciting to read. The only beef I have is the jumping about from time to time, it wasn't quite right for me
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LibraryThing member Alexander19
The Yellow Birds in a war novel to say the least. It is told by a soldier in Iraqi war, before he goes, while he's there and after he comes back home.
You cannot say to much about this one without giving it away, so let me say this: War is hell. The author was in the war, so I'm sad to say, that I
This was a good read, but boy was there some rough stuff. It will give you a knew appreciation to any soldier you come across that had been over there. You just don't realize how much they have all been through for our country.
The writing was top notch in this one, descriptive and lots of essence.
You cannot say to much about this one without giving it away, so let me say this: War is hell. The author was in the war, so I'm sad to say, that I
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am sure some of this is drawn from personal experience. You can turn a corner in this book to find a mass crowd of headless bodies, or limb tearing explosions. This was a good read, but boy was there some rough stuff. It will give you a knew appreciation to any soldier you come across that had been over there. You just don't realize how much they have all been through for our country.
The writing was top notch in this one, descriptive and lots of essence.
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LibraryThing member abbeyhar
Man I really wanted to like this, but I didn't. Maybe it's because I like Tim O'Brien so much and was expecting this to be like that, maybe because I was reading it during a stressful time of year for school, maybe because so much of what being in a war is like now sounds cliched. Who knows. It's
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like the author and I spoke very different languages, and I found his language to be boring and unrelatable. Show Less
LibraryThing member Schmerguls
This novel, authored by a man who served in the Army in Iraq in 2004-2005, tells stark story of two Virginia men who meet in the aRmy and are sent to Iraq. It is stark story, making a point of not deleting any expletive, which I suppose adds to the reality-soundingness of the storybut does not make
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the book more pleasing to read. Also the story jumps back and forth in time by chapters--which I personally find annoying. It would seem to me that a chronologicof account would work just as well as an account which tells something that happened before a happening already related--but I suppose there is some canon of fiction writing which suggests that such screwed up account is to be deired. The story tells of a totally bleak and disturbing time in Iraq, with the narrator utterly devastated by his experieince and his fellow soldier going off the deep end and being mutilated and killed by the enemy he seem to invite to harm him. There is good writing in the story and one is appalled anew by the uselessness and positive evil which the Iraq War brought so unnecessarily to this nation. I shuddered to think that those responsible for the war might fail to read the book or think it over-wrought. Show Less
LibraryThing member dalzan
Summary: In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. Bound together since basic training when Bartle makes a promise to bring Murphy safely home, the two have been dropped into a war
In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him and Bartle takes actions he could never have imagined.
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neither is prepared for.In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him and Bartle takes actions he could never have imagined.
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LibraryThing member dono421846
I'm not entirely convinced of the motivations of the secondary characters (Murphy, Sterling), and where did he get money to retire to a cabin, and live without working? But still a very engaging read.
ISBN
0316219347 / 9780316219341