I’m not the imploring type--but please, do anything you can to read this novel. It’s one of the best I’ve read in years, and Ben Fountain’s writing is so miraculously good that you can’t help but page through large swaths of it in slack-jawed amazement. It’s been six years since Ben gave us Brief Encounters with Che Guevara (still one of my favorite story collections), and it’s been well worth the wait. I wanted to write a long review here, because the novel’s worthy of so much meaty discussion--how sharply (and often hilariously) it grapples with the absurdities of war, politics, pop culture, sports, religion, and youth--but the simplest thing I can say is that to not read it would be to deprive yourself of an incredible experience. It’s the kind of novel that makes you say, “Hell yes. This is why I read fiction.”