Jack Lewis (3)

First let me try to give you the short version of my review. Have you ever read the assorted writings/diary of one of your friends?, I don't mean sneaking just that friend or friends who like reading and sometimes feel the need to write and then require some feedback. If you have then you are most likely familiar with the broken style, discontinuous timeline, and the occasional way too forced try at sophisticated language, think homemade Pynchon.
All is fine for the sake of friendship but is very different to pay for a book that should be first written by someone with a modicum of talent and then professionally edited, both of which conditions this book fails to meet.

If you are still with me for the details. Only the first half of the book is about the author's deployment, and in it the stories follow only a very tenuous timeline, of his two teammates only one is described in some detail, and the same is valid for any other characters with only one other person appearing repeatedly in the narration.

After that you would read about the author redeployment, PTSD and a failing marriage. Honestly by this point I was so bored and annoyed with the book that I failed to feel any empathy for the guy. For some reason in these pages you are welcome to a constant description of the author's homemade furniture and some hints at things that he witnessed in Iraq and sound plenty interesting but that are not mentioned in the first half of the book.

The last quarter of this volume is an assorted collection of motorcycle and how getting old feels stories, all featuring some connection to the writer's new marriage. Again I have to complain about the limited narrative style, for example a motorcycle ride story multiple pages long is filled with plain descriptions of a motorcycle parts that sometimes span only the factory and model names and very simple descriptions of a meal or a, how original, sunset.

So all in all I can only describe this book as a waste of money and, what's worse, time.… (más)

Nothing in Reserve: true stories, not war stories.
Jack Lewis
Litsam Press (2011), Paperback, 310 pages

I would be somewhat disingenuous if I said I'd cheerfully read anything Jack Lewis writes; I suspect his grocery lists are as mundane as yours and mine. Short of that, however, I have yet to read something by him that failed to make an impression.

Nothing in Reserve is both a highly personal and broadly engaging account of how Jack ended up in Iraq within spitting distance of his 40th birthday, when he thought he'd finished his Army hitch about 20 years before. He shares the things that go on and on and on but won't ever make the CNN 3-minute clips back home. He introduces us to the colorful cast of characters who share this deployment and relates funny things, tragic things and everyday things that are part of Army life. He creates rich and evocative word pictures that let even someone without military experience viscerally understand where he's been, and for someone who's been there's a sense of “Yep, I can relate to that”.

The transition back to civilian life is easily as poignant. There is no instant 'Home' switch – post-deployment is tough enough that there are whole sections in the military devoted to making the transition smoother. Everyday actions that most of us do without a second thought are very much against the conditioned nature of our returning troops. Getting back into civilized humanity is a full-time job. Jack shares that with us as well, helped along the way by his Pretty Wife and his Tucker-pup. I look forward to seeing more of his adventures for a very long time.… (más)