Matterhorn in Around the World in 80 Books

Sep 30, 2010 John rated it it was amazing

The most vivid and powerful book about the Vietnam War that I've read. ...more

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Dec 25, 2010 Sarah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, owned, hot-lit, recommend-to-friends

I read this book because it was on all the "best of" lists when it came out, and because the setting in Vietnam fit in nicely with my Around the World in 80 Books challenge. I didn't expect to like it half as much as I did. I found the story absolutely riveting. It's war, so it's violent, brutal, and gruesome, but the raw humanity of it all is breathtaking. What I really liked about it was that Marlantes, a highly decorated war veteran himself, doesn't make any judgments about the rightness or w ...more

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Jan 23, 2011 Sera rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, literary-fiction

Exceptionally well-written with a storyline that's both stunning and tragic at the same time. ...more

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Dec 15, 2010 Tony rated it it was amazing

Shelves: novels

According to the Library of Congress, there have been somewhere around 600 works of fiction written in English about the Vietnam War, starting with 1965's The Green Berets. While that might sound like a lot (excessive even), one has to bear in mind that every war is experienced from a huge variety of perspectives: civilian vs. military, army vs. air force, enlisted vs. officer, male vs. female -- and on and on. Although I took a college course on the war and have watched just about every Vietnam According to the Library of Congress, there have been somewhere around 600 works of fiction written in English about the Vietnam War, starting with 1965's The Green Berets. While that might sound like a lot (excessive even), one has to bear in mind that every war is experienced from a huge variety of perspectives: civilian vs. military, army vs. air force, enlisted vs. officer, male vs. female -- and on and on. Although I took a college course on the war and have watched just about every Vietnam War-related film there is (my favorite is probably the 1965 documentary The Anderson Platoon), I've only read four works of fiction about it: the classic Short-Timers, the underheralded short story collection Gunning for Ho, the massively overrated Tree of Smoke, and this.

I knew nothing about this book prior to starting it, other than a vague sense that "it's supposed to be good" and was immediately sucked into the incredibly detailed and awful world of Marine infantry in the mid-1960s. The book's familiar structure follows Princeton ROTC Lt. Mellas during his first two months in Vietnam, as he struggles to learn the ropes of leading a Marine platoon without getting his men killed. Stationed in Quang-Tri Province, Mellas and his men do battle with the unforgiving terrain, weather, and jungle creatures, disgusting food, minimal sleep, the prospect of contact with the enemy at any moment, and seriously out of touch leadership in the rear. All of which is rendered in sharp dialogue and descriptions liberally studded with military jargon and slang.

While the story covers many well worn themes (the sheer drudgery of war, the awful conditions, the chaos of a firefight, the futility of it all, the rear echelon MFs who don't have a clue what's going on, the racial tension, the class tension, etc.), it does so in such vividly compelling detail and emotional authenticity that most readers will find themselves completely sucked in. After finishing the book, I immediately went online to learn about the author, and it came as no surprise that he is a Vietnam Vet who lived much of what he's written about here, and that Lt. Mellas is a thinly fictionalized version of himself. I have all the respect in the world for imagination of fiction writers, but I just can't imagine this book coming out of someone who hadn't lived the events depicted. And it's a mark of the quality and truth to it all that just about every comment on the book I've seen by a Marine Vietnam Vet has been enthusiastically positive.

The story is basically a documentary of two months with a unit who is being shoved around the jungle by a glory-hungry Lt. Colonel looking for a fight with the NVA. Anyone with even cursory knowledge of the Vietnam War knows what a data-driven war it was and the extent to which body counts were relied upon as measures of success and manipulated as required. That manipulation is on full display here, brought home in a stunning few pages that show how the wheels of the military bureaucracy manage to utterly distort reality. Speaking of bureaucracy, the book also does an excellent job of showing how the administrative machinery of the military operates, often to the severe detriment of both the men and the mission. This goes a long way to explaining the underlying anger which suffuses the story -- anger at the senseless waste of young lives for what are at best, abstract strategic objectives.

To be sure, the book isn't perfect: there are two scenes in particular that are well-meaning but clumsy attempts to grapple with race and class. In each of these, Lt. Mellas is having a private conversation with "the other" (one black, one lower-class white), and in each case, the veil is lifted, defenses are dropped, and words are not minced, so that we are to learn what lies at the heart of the race/class conflict going on within the unit (and, of course, America). It's ambitious, but also kind of didactic and awkward, and unlike the rest of the book, completely artificial. The other episode that felt false, is unfortunately, the emotional climax of the book -- an incident that every reader will see coming from miles away and smacks of the kind of melodrama that the book otherwise avoids. It's a frustratingly disappointing ending to what is otherwise a masterpiece of war fiction. Still, these few missteps shouldn't dissuade anyone with an interest in feeling the emotional truth of Vietnam War, at least from the American Marine foot soldier's perspective.
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Aug 25, 2012 Sam rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1-contemp-literary, setting-war, reviewed, read-2014

The product of 30+ years’ worth of work by a decorated Marine veteran, Matterhorn was the novel of the year when it came out and hailed as one of the best works depicting the Vietnam War. The book takes you through the disorientation and confusion of battle, the mind-numbing waiting for battle, political power plays and careerism of the leadership, and friendships and conflicts among the soldiers. Characters will surprise you with their heroics and their brutalities and their pettiness and their ...more

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Aug 26, 2011 Andy Plonka rated it it was amazing

I don't know much about the Vietnam war so this novel was a real eye opener for me. The author gives a look at the day to day life of marines in combat in the area, not a jolly subject. One can see where PTSS comes from. It is amazing anyone could survive such an ordeal and not be emotionally wounded for life ...more

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