TCL Call#: 956.70443 Finkel D

Madeleine - 4 stars
Ugh. This book was heart-BREAKING. Finkel is too good at describing the idiocies of this particular war and the futility experienced by infantrymen trained to conquer and now required to "win over" locals with counterinsurgency techniques. Worse still is the back of the book – pictures of all the fallen soldiers he’s writing about. You see that 20 year old who lost his legs in the attack Finkel described in second-by-second minute.
Interstingly for me, the book did make me wonder about reading an Iraq or Afghanistan version of this war. I’ve never read a war book that made me want to seek out the non-American viewpoint. Indeed, I’ve read many WWII books and not once gone in search of the Japanese or German telling of the war (??? - how did I never notice this?). Somehow, I could not read The Good Soldier without wondering what the locals themselves were experiencing. Quite a feat since Finkel never directly addresses that topic.