Nat's review
Going After Cacciato
by Tim O'Brien
Nat's review
Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien
Nat's review
rating:
** spoiler alert **
The center of this story is Spec 4 Paul Berlin, an infantryman in Vietnam who is (unsurprisingly) ambivalent about the war and his role in it. There are three different intersecting timelines: the real elapsed time in the book seems to be one night that Berlin spends on watch in an observation post near the ocean. A large chunk of the book consists in flashbacks to the combat deaths of half a dozen or so of Berlin's platoon mates. The rest is Berlin imagining a cross-continental chase of Cacciato, who has deserted.
The flashbacks are solid descriptions of fighting in Vietnam, describing helicopter operations, clearing tunnels, calling in artillery on a village, and so on. The chase is half-heartedly fanciful, never really rising to Pynchonian weirdness. The platoon finds a trail of M&Ms in the jungle; they drive an Impala from Tehran to Izmir and get shot at by Iranian tanks, etc.
Berlin's worries aren't unusual: whether fighting the war is pointless, whether he can recogni...more
The flashbacks are solid descriptions of fighting in Vietnam, describing helicopter operations, clearing tunnels, calling in artillery on a village, and so on. The chase is half-heartedly fanciful, never really rising to Pynchonian weirdness. The platoon finds a trail of M&Ms in the jungle; they drive an Impala from Tehran to Izmir and get shot at by Iranian tanks, etc.
Berlin's worries aren't unusual: whether fighting the war is pointless, whether he can recogni...more
