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You Know When the Men Are Gone

by Siobhan Fallon (Goodreads Author)

3.73 of 5 stars 3.73 · rating details · 2,498 ratings · 734 reviews

Through fiction of dazzling skill and astonishing emotional force, Siobhan Fallon welcomes readers into the American army base at Fort Hood, Texas, where U.S. soldiers prepare to fight, and where their families are left to cope after the men are gone. They'll meet a wife who discovers unsettling secrets when she hacks into her husband's email, and a teenager who disappears...more

Paperback, 240 pages

Published January 3rd 2012 by NAL Trade (first published November 23rd 2010)

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Jun 16, 2011 Natalie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wish I had better feelings about this story. I wanted to like it, and I think that the writer's ability is evident, but these stories all felt very "surface" to me. Yes, they talk about the emotions of the wives, the emotions of the men deployed, but they never felt like they pushed anything. Pardon the non-literary reference, but if this were American Idol, Simon Cowell would call all these stories quite safe. I'm not sure how this was possible, but this woman wrote an entire collection of st...more

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Jun 15, 2011 Kathy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A well-crafted collection of short stories about soldiers and their wives back at Fort Hood. The stories are threaded together, but not in a distracting or forced way. I would have welcomed twice as many stories to have more time with these characters.

Ms. Fallon's spare and devastating stories show us people losing each other, losing limbs, losing their lives and more than that, shows us how hard it is to live at all when you wake up every morning fearing loss in a way that blots out virtually...more

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Dec 21, 2010 Melissa Rochelle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: arc, connected-stories, amyeinhorn

I can admit to being unsure about this book. I didn't think I would be able to connect with any of the stories because I'm not the wife of anyone, much less the wife of a soldier. However, I was hooked after the first story. Beautifully written, with many voices and viewpoints. It provides a glimpse into the lives of our soldiers and their families and allows the reader to understand (even if just as an outsider) the sacrifices the soldiers AND their wives make to protect our country.

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Dec 07, 2010 Megan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 4-stars, first-reads, short-story-collection, fiction

This set of eight short stories focuses on the absence of a partner who is away at war. The absence itself is both a lack and a constant presence in the lives of their loved ones, and families cope (or don't) in different ways. Set mainly in the community of Fort Hood among the loved ones left behind, these stories shine light on an aspect of American life that is both very contemporary and very eternal.

I really enjoyed this book. I sat down with it and found myself completely absorbed, to the...more

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Nov 26, 2010 Tara Chevrestt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: arc, 2011-release, shelf-awareness

The author has done a superb job of capturing military life, both from the POV of spouses waiting at home and the soldier's risking their lives everyday in combat. Also brings to light the difficulties soldier's face trying re adjust to life back at home. For full review:

http://wwwbookbabe.blogspot.com/2010/...

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Nov 10, 2010 Ellen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I didn't think I'd like this collection of stories. I feel so strongly against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and have mixed feelings about the soldiers who fight there. But Siobhan's stories are beautifully written, full of complexity and humanity. I still feel the same way about the military, but I'm very glad I read these stories, and had the opportunity to hang out with these women and men for a few days.

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Jan 30, 2012 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had this on my to read list for a while so I was excited to win this on Goodreads!!! I loved the book my only complaint was I wanted to read more about what happened to each of the characters. I'm even trying to get my husband to read it because I think he would enjoy it.

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Dec 25, 2010 Bianca rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: good-reads-giveaways

I won this book on the giveaways and when I started to read it I didn't want to put it down. Each short story was just as good as the last. They were just amazing. Without giving specific details away I just have to say that each story really lets you see how the lives of army families are effected by war. It shows the relationships with wives, girlfriends, husbands, and children that are tainted by war. It really is a must read whether you have family in the army or not. They are truly amazing...more

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Jan 07, 2011 Beth rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-read

just received this as a first read!!!

i luved this book...started it this morning...read it all thru my lunch break and came home right after work just so i could finish it

it was captivating...well written...insightful and touching

each section was well developed and heartfelt to the point where i thought the author could have taken any one of her short stories and continued on to write an entire book following those particular characters

i will definitely keep my eye out for future publications of...more

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May 01, 2013 Cindy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Remember that war the US is fighting over there somewhere? The one that you don't seem to hear about unless a conscious effort is made to follow it in the news -- it's easy to tune out those reports if you don't want to know, and apparently I don't because I don't seem to know much about what's going on over there in Iraq. These interconnected stories about the soldiers and the effects of this war on them and their families made it real, made it matter that we're fighting a war and people are su...more

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Sep 30, 2012 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Some of the best book club type books are those that are issue driven, and You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon is a prime example of one of these books. A collection of loosely connected short stories, the book focuses on the experiences of soldiers and their families. Set both stateside on the grounds of Fort Hood, Texas and on the frontline in Iraq, Fallon has crafted stories that address the many issues facing veterans and their families. From the soldier who develops a friendshi...more

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Sep 28, 2012 Bdalton rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-story

I am a military brat (my father served in Vietnam and died due to war related causes). I have found few books about the families left behind when their military men and women go to war. Fallon's collection of stories should be read by military family members seeking to find stories that speak to their experiences. They should also be read by Americans who don't have family members in the service so that they can fully appreciate the difficulties faced by military families.

Fallon describes base c...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Andrea Mullarkey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, stories

In this collection of linked short stories Fallon explores life on a contemporary military base. Through her fictional characters we get a clear view of the personal, political and practical challenges faced by wives and families left behind when soldiers deploy. The territory covered spans the emotional landscape on military bases as soldiers prepare for deployment, during the months wives endure during deployment, and over the period of adjustments required when soldiers return home. Common th...more

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Jun 30, 2012 CJ rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

A somewhat disjointed, but still interesting slice of life look at being a military wife. Spot on with loads of the details - I'm a military wife although my husband is not full time - then again, these days, there isn't a whole lot of difference between active duty and reserve soldiers. The book was accurate enough that it was tough to read; military families face challenges other families don't, and there's a higher rate of divorce among military families for readily apparent reasons. There's...more

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Apr 16, 2012 Valjbianco rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There are things that we all, as Americans, should know. Our history, our government, and our heritage as the freest, fairest, strongest, nation in the history of mankind would seem to be of paramount importance to any citizen's appreciation of the grand experiment that we call, the United States of America. I, for one, have always held the blood which has watered the "Tree of Freedom" for nearly two and a half centuries as sacrosanct. Yet, I must confess that in over fifty years of life, I have...more There are things that we all, as Americans, should know. Our history, our government, and our heritage as the freest, fairest, strongest, nation in the history of mankind would seem to be of paramount importance to any citizen's appreciation of the grand experiment that we call, the United States of America. I, for one, have always held the blood which has watered the "Tree of Freedom" for nearly two and a half centuries as sacrosanct. Yet, I must confess that in over fifty years of life, I have never fully considered the cost of freedom to the families of the men and women who protect that which we so easily take for granted.

Siobhan Fallon speaks of this quiet cost of liberty from firsthand experience. To my knowledge, she has never shed blood, nor taken life in defense of our nation, yet she, like countless others, has contributed mightily to the cause of freedom. Reading YOU KNOW WHEN THE MEN ARE GONE was, for me, an advanced civics lesson. It is a compelling glimpse into the lives of the unsung heroes of every war since the American Revolution, the wives and children of the American combat soldier.

To the student of military history, war is about tactics and strategy, courage under fire and relentless patience with unlivable conditions. It is easy to empathize with the tens of thousands of young lives forever altered by the last decade of war in the Middle East. Only a soulless man could fail to dry a tear at the site of wounded young soldiers devastated by war. Yet, how hard it is, to adequately consider the impact of warfare on the immediate families of our warriors.

Ms. Fallon makes deft use of fiction to bring her case to the reader. Using eight short stories, the author weaves her way through a myriad of pain, joy, glory and peace. I have no doubt that her stories are based in reality, for they are far too dynamic to be pure fiction. The heroes aren't just heroic, the villains aren't always evil. What the characters are, above all, is eminently human. And this, in my opinion, is the greatest strength of her work. Gone are the textbook perceptions of one dimensional wives at home and soldiers abroad. Her characters are complex and authentic. Quietly seething beneath the each of the stories, is the timeless frustration with the futility of war. It infects each story uniquely, some times to the positive, others to the negative and often, both. I found it interesting that each story was, in itself, a unique lesson. Ms. Fallon makes excellent use of the ebb and flow of the drama of war, building synergy with each chapter, one upon the other, to draw the reader into her world. By the end of the book she has educated her reader and accomplished her purpose, deep empathy with the families of men at war.

The stories are fast moving and emotional. The writing is excellent; fluid, forceful, and at times poetic. Above all the book, while entertaining, is highly educational. I will never again look at soldiers in the same way. YOU KNOW WHEN THE MEN ARE GONE has taught me a profound lesson. Battles are not fought by mere planes, tanks and ships. They are not won by strategy and tactics alone. Siobhan Fallon has taught me that wars are fought by families, families that may well feel the effects of their efforts for a lifetime.

It is a lesson that I dare not forget, and for that, I thank her. I highly recommend this book to all, and most especially those of us who, heretofore, actually thought we understood war! (less)

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Apr 15, 2012 Carol rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have mixed feelings about this book. Page after page I felt as though, while interesting, not all stories were relayed with the depth they warranted. I kept wondering if the author was going to return to some of the characters to define them better -- dig deeper into the emotions and psychological facets, for example, of a wife afraid for a spouse in harm's way, lonely; or the troublesome psyche of a returned soldier in shock, suffering perhaps of PTSD -- only to arrive at the end of the book...more

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Mar 23, 2012 skein rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 4-star, 2012, e-book

A dreamy half-lost gaze of a story collection - really, a novel broken into pieces. It dragged at me and pulled me under. I dreamt myself into that world -- it is our shared world, the world of soldiers gone from home and weapons and bombings -- but not my world, not my reality.

Some fragments were more solid than others. The interpreter. The man at the window. The injured foot. Meg. All of this happening simultaneously and still within its own time, as one holds memory; it is no surprise that th...more

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Feb 28, 2012 Timothy Bazzett rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As I closed the book after reading the last story in You Know When the Men Are Gone, I couldn't help thinking that you also know when an important new talent has emerged on the literary scene. Because Siobhan Fallon simply blew me away with these eight interrelated pieces which detail with a near surgical precision exactly what it is like - how it feels - to be part of the all-volunteer army that continues to fight our so-called "war on terror" thousands of miles away on the other side of our ev...more As I closed the book after reading the last story in You Know When the Men Are Gone, I couldn't help thinking that you also know when an important new talent has emerged on the literary scene. Because Siobhan Fallon simply blew me away with these eight interrelated pieces which detail with a near surgical precision exactly what it is like - how it feels - to be part of the all-volunteer army that continues to fight our so-called "war on terror" thousands of miles away on the other side of our ever-shrinking planet.

Every story in this jewel-like collection contains at least one moment - and often more - which will bring the hot sting of unshed tears to your eyes, if indeed you succeed in containing those tears. Because Fallon has succeeded in showing you another side of the wars, the hidden costs on the home front, which test, stretch, and often destroy military families. And these are young families, obviously - men and women, many barely out of their teens, who should be enjoying each other and their young children and babies. Instead they are faced with long and lonely separations, followed by reunions ruined by the unexplainable depressions, black rages and abberant behavior that are the unmistakable markers of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

While reading Fallon's stories I kept trying to think of other books I might have read which deal with the wives' stories. All that came to mind was the currently-running TV series, Army Wives, which my wife and I watch every week. I know it is based on a book, but we have not read it. Then I thought of a book from another war, Tim Farrington's moving and beautiful 2005 novel, Lizzie's War, which utilized shifting viewpoints, moving back and forth between the marine combatant in the Vietnam jungle and his wife and children back home in the States. Fallon's book easily equals that accomplishment.

Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge also came to mind, mostly because that novel too is rendered as a group of interrelated stories with the title character as the unifying element. In Fallon's book what unites the stories is not a single character, but a much larger entity, the army. And also, of course, the war, with its continuing deployments and separations, which eat away at the foundations of all those still-new, young and vulnerable marriages and relationships. Strout's book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I have a feeling that Fallon's book will also win its share of prizes.

Finally, I think You Know When the Men Are Gone should become required reading for the decision makers in Washington, from the President and Secretary of Defense all the way on down the chain of command, both civilian and military. It's probably naive of me to think this, but perhaps, having read these stories of heartbreak and misery, they would not be so quick to vote for war. It should also be read by every active duty soldier - in all branches of service. It would promote a better understanding of the lot of the women they leave behind every time they deploy. I guess I'm saying that the book deserves an extremely wide audience, because this slim volume of stories could - should - reverberate in our country for years to come. I give this book my unqualified and highest recommendation.(less)

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Feb 28, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sometimes a book calls to me and I am completely swept away. Nothing else matters - I am so caught up in the book that I can barely come up for air. Such was the case with Siobahn Fallon's You Know When the Men Are Gone. This book of intersecting short stories, each of which can stand alone, is a tour de force. It is about Fort Hood - the women who wait for their men to come home from deployment, the men who fight for our country in Iraq, the small issues in marriage that are large enough to bre...more Sometimes a book calls to me and I am completely swept away. Nothing else matters - I am so caught up in the book that I can barely come up for air. Such was the case with Siobahn Fallon's You Know When the Men Are Gone. This book of intersecting short stories, each of which can stand alone, is a tour de force. It is about Fort Hood - the women who wait for their men to come home from deployment, the men who fight for our country in Iraq, the small issues in marriage that are large enough to break a soul apart. Each of these stories is powerful. There is no weak link in this book. Each of the stories is a literary gem and each held me spellbound. Most of the stories deal with the theme of waiting, "that interminable waiting, waiting, waiting for her life to continue - such a long gray nothingness between departure and return, huge chunks of existence she filled up and pushed through as if it were a task rather than a stretch of her young life - would be over. There was such an unreality to the waiting, such limbo, sometimes she didn't even know what she was waiting for."

All the stories are about Fort Hood, Texas and the military families that reside or work there. The title story is about the wives of the military men. They take care of their own but their world is insular. When a foreign born army wife with minimal command of the English language, little understanding of cooking, unable to read directions and with a dog like Cujo comes into their midst, she challenges their solidarity and her every movement becomes an object of interest or suspicion. In 'Camp Liberty', an American soldier grows to care for his Iraqi translator. When she disappears, his world is torn apart. In 'Remission', a military wife deals with breast cancer along with the tribulations of raising an adolescent daughter. 'Inside the Break' is a powerful story of a military wife who hacks into her husband's e-mail. She discovers a secret that is almost impossible to come to terms with. In 'The Last Stand', a wounded soldier returns from Iraq and realizes that the wife he loves is leaving him. 'Leave' is about a military intelligence officer who returns on leave from Iraq to spy on his own wife. 'You Survived the War, Now Survive the Homecoming' tells of a marriage at risk after a soldier is jailed overnight with no memory of what occurred.

Siobhan Fallon, in an interview with Bookbrowse.com states that there is a lot of literature about the battlefield but not much about the home front. She is a military wife and knows that soldiers have families waiting for them at home, "all of them worrying, grieving and hoping their soldier will return to them. Those stories are fascinating to me, all those moments that lead up to a deployment as well as the moments that follow a homecoming, and I wanted to show readers that very specific and somewhat neglected world." Ms. Fallon does just that in this poetic, powerful, and brilliant book.
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Feb 05, 2012 Shann Ray rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In her wonderful breakout short story collection You Know When the Men Are Gone, Siobhan Fallon writes with the kind of quiet power that gives witness to our humanity. She let's us look deeply into the human soul, our own soul and the soul of others, by taking us down into the desolation of the beloved families of our military personnel and the complexity, delusion, hope, and courage that accompanies people caught in the grip of interior and collective war. With lines like these, we are led into...more

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Feb 02, 2012 Diane Van Tassell rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Though I really dislike short stories, I think this is an important book for everyone to read. Our soldiers are away from home fighting and dying for our freedoms and way of life, and we should understand what it takes for them to do this. We think we know what sacrifices that these soldiers and their families are making but we don't really understand how deep these sacrifices are for everyone involved. Usually the deployed soldiers are our main concern but this book helps us to understand that...more

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Jan 21, 2012 Mandy Jo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: texas-themed

This week’s headline? home fires burning

Why this book? Fort Hood, Texas

Which book format? second-hand hardback

Primary reading environment? fly-over zone

Any preconceived notions? "worth the wait"

Identify most with? blond little puta

Three little words? "please watch children"

Goes well with? Burger King drank

Recommend this to? "a woman terp"

I'm cheating here. Instead of a review, I'm posting an excerpt from a MySpace blog entry I wrote at least 5 years ago.

There's a piece in this month's Vogue abou

...more

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Sep 09, 2011 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-books-i-have-reviewed, favorites

In this terse and bold book of eight interconnected stories featuring Fort Hood army wives, breakout author Siobhan Fallon invites readers to peek through the hazy base-house curtains into largely uncharted territory. She offers an intimate glimpse of the spouses and children left behind to cope when the men in the infantry battalion of 1-7 Cav are deployed to Iraq.

We've seen media pictures proffering the stalwart strength and Mona Lisa smiles of army wives, but we haven't been host to their pri...more In this terse and bold book of eight interconnected stories featuring Fort Hood army wives, breakout author Siobhan Fallon invites readers to peek through the hazy base-house curtains into largely uncharted territory. She offers an intimate glimpse of the spouses and children left behind to cope when the men in the infantry battalion of 1-7 Cav are deployed to Iraq.

We've seen media pictures proffering the stalwart strength and Mona Lisa smiles of army wives, but we haven't been host to their private trials--of farewells, homecomings, and transitions. Fallon captures their mixed emotions and fears with a gritty realism, and reveals critical, vital moments in their insular and marginal lives. She glances sharply into the tearful deployment, the lonely absence, and the stirring homecoming. How the wives cope with these changes is a recurring theme.

This is fiction, but Fallon writes with authority: her husband, a major, was deployed in Iraq for two tours of duty while she lived in Fort Hood. She knows the depth of the cookie-cutter, thin-walled houses--they are occupied by courageous and terrified women with thick skins, empty beds, and tentative thoughts.

The wives in this book form a proxy family together, the FRG (Family Readiness group), where, for better or worse, they convene and connect. They bond in this dry and desolate patch of Central Texas, support each other, and wait for news of the front. Mingling with civilians off base is distressing. It's painful to watch a dad knock around a ball with his son, or a couple dining out and dancing cheek to cheek. Some of these wives have babies who haven't yet met their daddies. How they endure the complex emotions of separation drives the narrative and compels the reader.

As Fallon shows us, the time in limbo is often marked with dread and confusion. It can be a powerful change agent, mushroom their fear, or injure self-esteem, to name a few effects. It can dash a formerly positive body image, especially if anxiety and loneliness create eye bags and a gaunt complexion. The women in her stories often have sleep disturbances and eat erratically. One woman quells her insomnia by listening to her neighbor's routines through the permeable walls.

In the first story, Meg goes to the Commissary, eyes a raw slab of steak--the rivulets of fat, the sanguinary juices, the protruding bone--and imagines a mortal battle wound. The women wake up every morning and scan the Internet news for reports of ambushes and roadside bombs, wondering if their husbands are safe in their quarters or unrecognizably shattered in numberless pieces. Meanwhile, they have individual, separate concerns. Fallon kicks it up a notch with her story about a wife in remission from breast cancer, waiting to see the latest reports of her medical tests. In the meantime, her kids did not show up for school, and she has to deal with the embarrassment of soldiers on base assisting, investigating, and scrutinizing her actions that day.

And, what is it like to communicate with your loved one only through technology, to feel the unbearable absence of touch? To wait, and wait, time folding in on itself, or rolling out, while you cleave, living on emails, snail mail, and the rare skype. And, even when they return, the complex dynamics of adjustment and role reversal are stunning; the wives have been independent for so long that sharing a life again can be raw and awkward. Instead of joyful and warm, it may be glacial and fraught with erosion. All that alone time carves out multiple reflections and haunting desires. At least one wife has some lacerating news for her returning and wounded husband.

And, what is it like for the men, the soldiers and officers who have bravely committed this time to the safety and well being of their fellow infantrymen? They didn't sign up to divide their loyalties, to betray their families, but the quixotic beast of war invades the frontier of domestic life, too. Some of them sneak cell phones into their camp. One of the soldiers becomes enchanted with a comely foreign interpreter while on a mission to search for IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). Another soldier isn't sure if he is just paranoid or failed to perceive his wife's change of heart, and acts frantically on his fears. And some of them don't make it home. For those wives, it is the pain of the unknown, the moment of death that is now gone, that took their husband away. That image, the memories, and the disfigurement of grief remain.

Imagine, all alone, with a flashlight, tiptoeing in the dark inside a squat, yellow, dusty rectangular building, suddenly bumping up against a life. You emit a startled gasp. That's what these stories are like. Fallon's prose is stark and incandescent. There are no frills or filler necessary to embellish these candid characters and situations, and I have only hinted at a few. The passages are powerful and lean, the nuances chilling and urgent, and the dénouements radiate with ambiguity. These are bracing mini-portraits with mega-wattage. When you hear Fort Hood mentioned in the news again, it will palpate with familiarity. You'll feel a jolt. It will never again be just that abstract military post in Texas. You'll know when the men are gone.

This review is based on an advanced reading copy I received from the publisher in a lottery giveaway. I was not asked to write a review or praise this book. Rather, I was compelled by the piercing and captivating stories themselves.

See my full review on mostlyfiction.com
http://bookreview.mostlyfiction.com/2...
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Jun 30, 2011 Evanston Public Library added it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Here is the fan mail I sent to Siobhan Fallon:

Dear Siobhan Fallon, Yesterday I read your book. Today, in between the depressing news in the New York Times and the trivial news in the Chicago Tribune, I read it again. I've already recommended it to four people and will recommend it to many more (I'm a librarian, however, so don't get too excited about sales). The stories are so simple and so powerful. I was awake a good part of last night thinking about them. The characters are real and haunting...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Amanda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As an Army brat, albeit not one who grew up on a base, I found this collection to be honest and beautifully written. Other novels I have read on the subject come off as trite, or stereotypical, and while many may criticize Fallon for her stereotypical characters, the books really has depth. I did not find the characters to be “prototypes” or flat at all. The reality is, there are more men than women in the military, which is perhaps why Fallon did not choose to explore women soldiers more thorou...more

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May 09, 2011 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult, short-stories, war, pstd, relationships, marriage

This is a superb collection of 8 fictional short stories featuring army wives living at Fort Hood, Texas. When the men are deployed to Iraq, they form makeshift support groups and attend FRG (Family Readiness Group) meetings. The wives attempt normalcy to provide stability to their children, but they share a deep void that is impossible to ignore, the absence of all the men on base. The walls are thin, and neighbors are prone to eavsdropping and gossip. They become obsessed with following the ne...more

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Apr 03, 2011 Caren Rich rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A friend loaned me this book, because of the volunteer work I do with our Veterans and their families. I didn't think I would love this collection of eight linked stories, but I couldn't put it down.

The fictional stories are set in the army base of Fort Hood, Texas and are about the women left behind while their husbands fight in Iraq.

The women are from different cultures with different worldviews, yet united through the common military culture. Everyday at exactly 5:30 PM, people on the base...more

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Mar 15, 2011 Malena Watrous rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There were a couple of stories in this collection that I liked a lot. The first one, about a Russian woman at Fort Bragg who neglects her kids and generally fails to conform to the army wife model, is quite good. I also liked the creepy one about the returned soldier lurking in his basement, spying on his wife and peeing in bottles. In general, I found this to be a very readable book, and I liked the window into army life--especially that of spouses of male soldiers--that it provided. I wished t...more

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Mar 12, 2011 Diane Prokop rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Broken relationships, cheating husbands, and children acting out make up the grist of any good story. You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon has plenty of that and more all centered around Fort Hood Army base.
When I picked up Fallon’s debut collection of eight short stories, I quickly put it down to read another day. I feel bad about war. It’s sad and it sucks the life out of those it touches mentally and physically. Do I feel good about our soldiers putting their lives in jeopardy?...more Broken relationships, cheating husbands, and children acting out make up the grist of any good story. You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon has plenty of that and more all centered around Fort Hood Army base.
When I picked up Fallon’s debut collection of eight short stories, I quickly put it down to read another day. I feel bad about war. It’s sad and it sucks the life out of those it touches mentally and physically. Do I feel good about our soldiers putting their lives in jeopardy? Do I need a reminder of the precipice of mass destruction we sit on that could easily blow us up in the blink of an eye? Do I want to read about mangled bodies, relationships and families? As it turns out, I do.
The fact that this book about war was written by a woman made me pick it up again and I am so glad I did. Fallon pulls back the curtain on an aspect of the war that’s not often exposed. She writes about the families of those who serve: the wives of the men who deploy, the husbands who serve and the children caught in the crossfire. And she writes from experience. She is married to an Army officer who has deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan. She knows her subject intimately and it shows when she gives us a peek into the small details of everyday life of the military family.
In one story, Meg Brady becomes obsessed with her next door neighbor’s life and listens through the paper thin walls to her comings and goings day after day while she waits for her husband to return from his tour of duty. There’s Ellen Roddy battling cancer and trying to understand what is happening to her young children who are acting out. Her husband was supposed to deploy but stayed to help manage the family while she manages her illness. Carla Wolenski struggles to cope with her husband when he returns from duty full of anger and almost a stranger to her.
Fallon also gives us the flip side when she writes from the male perspective of an injured soldier coming home to a wife who has decided to deploy to another life that does not include him. Another is of a soldier, Moge, who finds himself attracted to the female Iraqi interpreter in his unit and who realizes he doesn’t want to leave his men to return home.
Fallon does a superb job of relaying the whirlwind of activity that goes into motion when a soldier deploys, when he comes home, or when he dies - detailing all the rituals of their lives that become the glue holding it all together. All eight stories are loosely connected and so the protagonist in one might be a supporting character in another which gives it cohesiveness that builds familiarity and makes it read like a novel.
I found myself wanting more and I think any of these stories could make a great full-length novel. You know it’s good when it leaves you wondering about the characters long after you finish the story. Fallon doesn’t aggrandize the lives and no moral judgments are made on whether war is right or wrong. It just is. I wish we lived in a world without war, but until we do we are lucky to have an author like Fallon who can help explain it to us.(less)

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Mar 09, 2011 Alex Templeton rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This collection features stories about the citizens of Fort Hood, Texas--in particular, the wives waiting for their husbands to come home from year-long deployments to Iraq. While I definitely felt that I got a window into a completely different way of life from my own (and all my best wishes are sent to the real-life counterparts of these story characters), I went away from this collection feeling more of an emotional connection to the condition the characters were in rather than the characters...more

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About Siobhan Fallon

Siobhan Fallon's You Know When the Men Are Gone, Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam:
"The explosive sort of literary triumph that appears only every few years" New York Journal of Books
"...gripping, straight-up, no-nonsense stories" The New York Times
"...searing collection" Entertainment Weekly's Must List
"...a terrific and terrifically illuminating book" The Washington Post
"...fascinating" O, The Oprah Mag...more

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Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War

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“I said I don't want to know," Kailani said firmly, her voice suddenly too loud. Cristina sat back into the bench, her eyes wide and disappointed. Then Ana started waving wildly, her small hand arcing for her mother's undivided attention, and, as Kailani watched in silence, the child slipped safely down the slide."

Kailani to Cristina” — 1 person liked it

“It was "Boom Boom" Dupont who had ripped Kit out of the Humvee after the IED went off, the IED that turned the entire undercarriage of his truck into a fiery wall that consumed the five men inside.” — 1 person liked it

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