Even more depressing though, is the fact that like an endless monologue, this continuing violence has sometimes for me, I will admit, occasionally slipped into meaninglessness. And as terrible as violence of this magnitude is, that is not okay. Thus when something comes along and jars me out of the reverie that is everyday life and reminds me that there are those that have not, are not, nor never will enjoy such reverie again, I am thankful if always a little shaken. Kevin Powers book "The Yellow Birds" was exactly one of those things.
A veteran of the Iraq war, Power's "The Yellow Birds" has evoked a lot of praise and rightly so. The book tells the story of Pvt. Bartle, 21 years old, a true soldier, well trained and numb to the horrors he must accomplish. But it is also the story of Murph, a sensitive 18 year-old that Bartle has promised to keep alive, a promise that is broken. This death and death in general is not the focus of "The Yellow Birds" though. Instead, it is how Murph's death comes to be and how meaningless and meaningful death can be, that the story revolves around.
Yet the route to understanding is anything but straight as Powers jumps in time and place from the past to present, from Iraq to Virginia to Germany to New Jersey, and from deserts to deserted buildings to rooftops to dreamscapes to places we, as readers, do not want to go. And while this narrative style of pulling together fractured pieces sounds frustrating, it isn't. Instead, not only does it oh-so-perfectly match both the state of war and the state of our narrators head, but it serves to make the reader an active participant in both a story and a war that we might otherwise shy away from. All told, "The Yellow Birds" is a necessary jarring but is a jolt that is both lyrical and tragic like a nightmare that is so vivid it is at once haunting and beautiful.
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