Going After Cacciato

[Grant, Usurper of Book Club]

This book was a big change from The Love a Good Woman. With Alice Munroe, it was a lot harder to read, especially if I was tired, I felt like I was missing a lot of the story. This book was easier for me to breeze through and pick up. I'm saying that more as an observation than anything else.

Spoilers, I'm not sure how to talk about the book without talking a lot about the ending. Especially the passage with Paul Berlin and Sarkin Aung Wan at the negotiating table which summed everything up so well.

There are some elements here that remind me of Slaughterhous 5, the way that time keeps moving forward and back again.

This book is crazy, but it's less crazy than Slaughterhouse 5, dragging you slowly down until you realize how far you've gone.

Paris, the fact that how Sydney Martin's death seemed like it was going to be a major plot point, but the details of which are not even disclosed. Did that platoon frag him? Did it just happen in the tunnels? I thought that mattered because it could have helped to explain why Cacciato ran.

The book seems to go to great lengths not to describe it as running, but simply as leaving. Everyone who is giving chase too though is also running. This is why at the negotiating table it is Paul Berlin vs Sarkin Aung Wan, but what is really happening, is Paul is explaining to himself what he is doing. Paul is justifying his actions, even though throughout the whole book, the actions he takes are prescribed to him by others and by the army.

The real ending then is unexpected, but not a surprise. Paul is someone who is doing what he is told to do, but someone who is not cut out/okay with the things he is told to do, but he keeps trying to do it anyways.