The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
As I continue reading this book more details and different viewpoints present themselves. Some styles that the author uses are appealing and some are not. I am enjoying the book based on the intense descriptions of everything Filkins encounters, however he certainly leaves somethings unclear.
I wish the author set a better timeline for the piece. This does not by any means ruin the work, but it would be easier as a reader if he didn't jump around so much. I am about half way through the book now and I am realizing more and more that I lost track of where we are in time. Maybe the author does that on purpose? I'm really not sure. If it is good for anything, I can relate as a writer sitting down with a subject and scrambling through notes and quotes trying to make some sense of it. Maybe during his time in this area his notes were kind of all over the place, which in turn translated into a less structured timeline of events in the book.
Someone in my group had brought up an event in the book that I have just read about and it's remarkable to say the least. The Americans brought in a blonde woman to a fake auction and were pretending to sell her to the highest bidder. The Iraqi people went crazy. While the bidding continued, American soldiers conducted searches of homes in three different regions and took all of the weapons and firearms they could find. Some Iraqis offered their children, cars, goats, etc. It is incredible to see how differently these individuals practice their courting among many, many other things in their lives.
The aspect of this work that I appreciate most is the way Filkins explains both sides of each story. We touched on it a little bit in the last book club, but I realized it a lot reading the parts that I read for today. He is very non-biased and just wants to relay the truth to the reader without regard to previous opinions. In fact, he goes to great lengths to achieve this truth, sometimes getting extremely close to violence.
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