As I reach the end of your novel I become more interested. Especially because they're is even more story telling now, and is becoming much more intense story telling. The stories told are such a stretch and seem so unreal, but there is an air about them that truly makes you believe they really happened, and I'm convinced that they did.
One story in particular that I found really controversial for the time, and super intriguing was the one about the young girl who came to Vietnam because her boyfriend shipped her in. It seems sort of borderline controversial because having a woman on the battle field was probably looked down upon by most, but the men in their unit didn't have a problem with it. In fact, they all seemed to fall in love with her, but she seemed to fall in love with the war. She learned how to help soldier when they were wounded, learn to work and M-85, and began going on ambushes with the "greenies" without others knowing at first. They say that she became obsessed with the war and ambushes because she felt completely herself when she was out there. Eventually, they began to see less and less of her. Until she would be gone for days. One late night her and the 6 "greenies" return to their tent, and the other soldiers were, of course, very curious, and her boyfriend upset about what she was doing. So finally, the peer into the tent and find a jaguars head on a pole and Mary anne, the girl ,with a necklace of human tongues around her neck while she chanted and lied there with the rest of the crew. From then on she was a completely different person, and she and her boyfriend broken off. Later on, she was never to be seen of again, but assumed to be alive and out in the forest.
Now this is a very odd story, and very hard to believe, but with the passion for writing Mr. O'Brien shows, something makes you believe that he is telling the truth. That is what I truly like about his novel. Is that despite what we may think of the war, and what we may find to be true or not, I can't help but believe and feel what he says. I think it is that element that gave him an award from his book and critics acclaim. It was a very well written, easy to comprehend, and intriguing novel, and to be honest, I'm not one for war stories, but this has changed my view of what they really are about.
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