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Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk: A Novel
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Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk: A Novel
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Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk: A Novel
Ebook377 pages6 hours

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk: A Novel

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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About this ebook

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and a finalist for the National Book Award

“Brilliantly done . . . grand, intimate, and joyous.” —New York Times Book Review

From the PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author of the critically acclaimed short story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, comes Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk ("The Catch-22 of the Iraq War" —Karl Marlantes).

Three minutes and forty-three seconds of intensive warfare with Iraqi insurgents—caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew—has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America’s most sought-after heroes. Now they’re on a media-intensive nationwide tour to reinvigorate public support for the war. On this rainy Thanksgiving Day, the Bravos are in Texas Stadium, slated to be part of the halftime show.

Among the Bravos is nineteen-year-old Specialist Billy Lynn. Surrounded by patriots sporting flag pins on their lapels and support our troops bumper stickers, he is thrust into the company of the team’s owner and his coterie of wealthy colleagues; a born-again cheerleader; a veteran Hollywood producer; and supersized players eager for a vicarious taste of war. Over the course of this day, Billy will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years.

Poignant, riotously funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a searing and powerful novel that has cemented Ben Fountain’s reputation as one of the finest writers of his generation.

Editor's Note

Football and fireworks…

Packed with heroic soldiers, football, cheerleaders, PTSD-inducing fireworks, and of course, satire, this moving novel takes place during a Dallas Cowboys’ halftime show. For fans of “Catch-22,” “Slaughterhouse Five,” and American football.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateMay 1, 2012
ISBN9780062096821
Author

Ben Fountain

Ben Fountain was born in Chapel Hill and grew up in the tobacco country of eastern North Carolina. A former practicing attorney, he is the author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, and the novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award and a finalist for the National Book Award. Billy Lynn was adapted into a feature film directed by three-time Oscar winner Ang Lee, and his work has been translated into over twenty languages. His series of essays published in The Guardian on the 2016 U.S. presidential election was subsequently nominated by the editors of The Guardian for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary. He lives in Dallas, Texas with his wife of 32 years, Sharon Fountain.

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Reviews for Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Rating: 4.142857142857143 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very entertaining. Great audiobook
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Witty and warm, if occasionally implausible, it's a cunning look at patriotism, consumerism and propaganda. And violence. And cheerleaders.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The basics: Set on Thanksgiving Day 2004, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk takes place at the Dallas Cowboys annual Thanksgiving Day game. Billy Lynn, a nineteen-year-old member of Bravo Company, is our window into the bizarre festivities. Here, the young men of Bravo Company, famous for winning a filmed fight with insurgents, are on a "victory tour" before returning to Iraq. The Cowboys game, where they participate in the halftime festivities with Destiny's Child, is their final stop.My thoughts: The premise of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a fascinating one, and I admit I had rather high expectations going in, but at the end of the novel, I found myself saying, "that's it?" That isn't to say Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a bad book; it's a good book, but I wish it would have been a great book.One of the novel's weaknesses was having Billy Lynn narrate the entire novel. At times his observations were poignant and moving: "why, please, do they play the national anthem before games anyway? The Dallas Cowboys and the Chicago Bears, these are two privately owned, for-profit corporations, these their contractual employees taking the field. As well play the national anthem at the top of every commercial, before every board meeting, with every deposit and withdrawal you make at the bank!" Who better to deliver that diatribe than a nineteen-year-old small-town Texas virgin back home for a whirlwind 'victory' tour after an intense time in Iraq. He knows he's on his way right back to Iraq too. He has the right perspective.The narration's weakness occurred in two ways, however. First, at times Fountain seemed to make Billy Lynn more omniscient and wise than he was in most parts. Second, the thoughts of a 19-year-old about the Iraq War in 2004 already seem dated. They're certainly not bad thoughts, but they're not terribly new. For me, this novel shined brightest when Fountain took over. I think this novel would felt more modern and held greater depth if Fountain opted for either a true omniscient narrator or told the story in multiple voices. Billy Lynn is a great window into that world, but I wish he weren't the only one in this novel.I'm generally a fan of slow, contemplative novels, but the action (or lack thereof) in this novel really dragged. The combination of the pace with Billy Lynn's intelligent but redundant observations hindered the momentum. The novel had the most momentum during the flashbacks, both to war and other events. The flashback of Billy Lynn's brief time with his family during the tour was the most moving of the novel. The contrast of how the soldiers speak to one another and how people expect them to act was interesting, but it soon grew redundant.At the center of what I wished were better in this novel was Billy Lynn as a character. At times he was a believable 19-year-old soldier, but at other times, I felt Fountain more than Billy. Or rather, I felt Fountain trying a bit too hard with Billy. These chips in credibility pulled me away from the narrative. For one particular storyline, Billy's romance with the cheerleader, it felt forced, unreal and fell emotionally flat to me.Despite these flaws, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk isn't a bad novel. I criticize it because in many ways it was so close to being a great novel. Fountain has a tremendous gift for language, but it wasn't enough to distract me from the novel's plot and character shortcomings.Favorite passage: "There was no such thing as perfection in this world, only moments of such extreme transparency that you forgot yourself, a holy mercy if there ever was one."The verdict: While I appreciate what Ben Fountain tries to do here, overall the novel felt one-note to me. It took more than 300 pages to cover a few hours, albeit with flashbacks, but the flashbacks were the most enlightening and interesting parts.The events at the Cowboys game soon become dull and feel unnecessarily drawn out. The writing and ideas are top notch, but there's not much new here. If you're one who has not contemplated the hypocrisy of war, capitalism, Hollywood and professional sports, this novel will likely read like a revelation. If, however, you're well-versed in the shortcomings and hypocrisies of the Iraq War, you may find yourself wishing for more.Rating: 4 out of 5
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I admit to having a difficult time reading this book. The story didn't flow for me and because it was so choppy I struggled trying to stay with it. The message, however, is profound and well done. These young American soldiers are being hailed as heroes after a horrible skirmish in Iraq . The author addresses the issue of how we got there in the first place, who is fighting, who is fit to fight, the toll war takes and just about every other war theme one can think of. All of this is juxtaposed to a Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Day football game in all its inanity. This book is worthy of all the awards.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A solid read, although the Texan lowlifes who are the villains of the piece, are a bit too broadly drawn.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I think it would fair for me to refer to this book as an achievement. I've been waiting for the last few years for a novel to capture the most recent Iraq War and the United States for all it's superficial patriotic bravado and Ben Fountain does exactly that.

    What amazes me the most is how Fountain captures the complicated, conflicting and confused inner thoughts of the Bravos in the face of the shallow praise that is heaped upon them over the course of the book. From what I can tell Fountain never served in the military so he must have had great people to advise him on that aspect of the book.

    There really is so much wrapped up in this book that due to general a lack of eloquence and coherent thought I can't even go into. So let me just say: READ THIS BOOK.

    This may be the best book released in 2012 (so far).
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Recommend !!
    Whooaaaa . . let's stop and think about this one. To be a young person (especially male) in America with war and major league football to compare. Made me dizzy to think of all the absurdities so glaringly revealed in this brief snapshot of the Bravo Company's Heroic 2 week tour - - -being famous for the worst day / several minutes of your life. Then being "paraded" around the country as a way to "sell the war" to oblivious Americans, monied football fanatics, etc. Then being immediately sent back to the war zone. Wow!
    He has opportunity to make a different choice - how would you handle that choice?
    Billy Lynn is well portrayed - small town Texas boy - with his first encounters into many aspects of life - rather like a young person's first year away from home at college - except he's already had a best friend die in his arms. He's a person who will make a mark in life and one of the cheerleaders - omg, seems to have become immediately smitten with him . . . .
    Wonder what the next weeks will bring?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Having just read George Packer's The Unwinding, I found in this novel a prime example of how a well-told story can often provide a better critique of modern America than straight reportage. Great writing. Great book.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    2.5**

    From the book jacket: A ferocious firefight with Iraqi insurgents – three minutes and forty-three seconds of intense warfare caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew – has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo squad into America’s most sought-after heroes. For the past two weeks the Bush administration has sent them on a media-intensive nationwide Victory Tour to reinvigorate public support for the war. Now, on a chilly and rainy Thanksgiving Day, they are guests of the Dallas Cowboys, slated to be part of the halftime show alongside Destiny’s Child.

    My reactions
    My stars, this took forever to take off. For the first 100 pages or so, I was completely bored and had no idea where this mess was going. I didn’t like how the men of Bravo squad were portrayed – hard drinking, foul-mouthed, crude. If this hadn’t been a selection for my F2F book club I would have given up after 50 pages.

    Once the squad gets into the private club room to meet the Cowboys’ owner and other high-powered, moneyed VIPs, the book begins to get interesting (pg 108). The last third of the book was very good. Billy Lynn is only 19 after all, from a small town, with limited education and no real exposure to the world at large. He takes his cue from the other members of Bravo Squad, particularly Staff Sergeant Dime, who is more a father to Billy than his own father is. In the space of several hours Billy is forced to examine his role in the war, in the media circus that is their victory tour, in his family. He begins to consider his options and what his future might look like.

    This is a satire, so many of the characters and situations are outlandish and exaggerated. This is also Fountain’s first full-length novel, though he won numerous awards for his short stories. I think his experience and skill at short story writing showed in this work. The work seemed choppy in places, lacking any sort of transition from chapter to chapter. Some of the scenes (Billy’s visit with his family, in particular) would make fine short stories all on their own.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was harsh to rate this only 3 stars when I finished it last night, but I was slightly annoyed by the last 100 pages or so. My inner voice was screaming "Oh get on with it" as we (yet again) go from the stands, to another room, for another long protracted discussion about a movie deal that's ultimately going nowhere.

    Billy Lynn is very much a 21st century hero- a wild, reckless and bored youth, forced by circumstance into the army and from there, into bloody conflict in Iraq. His story is told, mainly, on a cold Thanksgiving before, during and after the big game at Dallas Cowboys. There's booze, there's punch-ups, there's a hot cheerleader, but most of all there's a very well painted picture of attitudes towards not only soldiers, but the wars they are fighting. While these attitudes are portrayed as solely American, among the banner waving patriotism, as a UK reader, it also rings true of attitudes over here, so don't let the 'All-American' setting deter you from picking this up. Admittedly, if American football isn't you're thing (are you broken?) then you may zone out for small sections of the narrative.

    My only criticism of the novel is I would have like more flashback to the family, his sisters especially, as they fascinated me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A brilliant novel about war that takes place far from the field of battle at the annual Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Day football game, the culmination of a “victory tour” for a squad of young grunts whose heroic actions in Iraq have made them a marketable commodity to drum up support for the war. Hilariously skewers the culture of instant celebrity, politics, patriotism and power, and poignantly conveys the senselessness of sending young men to war.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk has been on my kindle shelf since 2012 and I've finally read it. It is our April F2F bookclub read. It wasn't my kind of book. I think I can appreciate what the author was trying to do with the book but I don't think he quite got it done. It just didn't make the it. This is a story of soldiers who were fighting in Iraq home for a brief stay to tour the US for heroic action and culminates with a day at Texas Stadium to be the halftime show. There is talk of a movie about the heroic action of Bravo. Probably every Bravo man is having some sort of PTSD. Its a story of young man, Billy Lynn, who didn't join the service but was strongly encouraged by a judge to go to war rather than jail. Billy Lynn is young, 19, but a good soldier. He hasn't had a real girlfriend yet, he isn't of age to drink, but he is old enough to fight a war for the people of the US who care more about football and money. The book is an antiwar book, a political statement. The book may lend itself to discussion but I am expecting that few will actually get this book read. Also there was way to much swearing and using God's name profanely.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It's almost horrible that the first two books I have read in 2016 have been as good as they were; it will seem like every book from here out will be a let down.

    Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a powerful book about a heroic squad of soldiers who come home to be honored and then they are invited to the spectacle of a Thanksgiving Cowboys game where the juxtaposition between that world, the one of the commercial, professional football business with all of its free-flowing money and materials, and the soldiers' world, where very little is free-flowing except Iraqi animosity and shrapnel, sears.

    Unflinching and very much worth reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The more I read this book, the more I loved it. The length of the book is over one day of a Victory tour for a group of soldiers who are on leave from Iraq.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It took me a while to get into this book, but I am glad I stuck with it. I'm not American, a football fan or someone who particularly likes books about soldiers and war. But this novel made me think, and I took several messages from it: to those who aren't soldiers and have no soldiers close to them, war is a "half-time show" they experience from time to time on TV; it is almost impossible for soldiers to talk about war to those who haven't experieced it; what does "supporting our troops" really mean....what kind of support do they want and need?; what is a hero?Mr. Fountain has done a great job of showing the bond among a squad of soldiers. He writes dialogue particularly well and is able to tell a story that is funny, shocking and disturbing all at the same time. I have a son slightly older than Billy Lynn and I came to understand and care about Billy through the skillful way Mr. Fountain drew him. Like other reviewers, I found the book unrelentingly cynical and in no way subtle. The same message was conveyed over and over again, perhaps once or twice too often. But on balance, add me to the list of fans.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was, to me, an almost unputdownable read. It is set in the Dallas Cowboy's Stadium over the course of a three hour game (with the odd flashback) and tracks the passage of a group of young soldier's victory parade, after a heavily publicised action in Iraq. The group lead by Sergeant "Dime " and featuring the 19 year old hero, Billy Lynn are sensitively portrayed but never glamourised by the author and in the end, I could feel nothing but pity for them as they faced the imminent return to front line action, albeit that that might be easier to face than the people they meet and interact with at the stadium. Billy Lynn is an unforgettable portrait of a boy, trained for nothing in his life, and forced into the army after extracting revenge for his sister's accident. Through him we ponder life, death, love and spirituality as he comes up against veritable monsters of the US system. A wonderful book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Contains at least one of the best chapters I've ever read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Fountain certainly understands how nineteen year old males think! I get that sometimes a lot of story elements may be compressed for impact but in the end this novel was a bot of a let-down because I could not suspend sufficient disbelief in the concatenation of events taking place in a period of several hours within a football stadium.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A jingoist Texan comes up to a soldier on leave from Iraq, thanks him for his service and spouts a string of familiar lines about terrorism and the importance of the war. For his part, the soldier feels awkward about the praise, ambivalent about his involvement, and suspicious towards his thanker. If you would enjoy such an exchange, this book is for you--wherein it seems to be repeated about 400 times.

    I did enjoy the book's ending though, which I thought nicely encapsulated the country's true power structure (spoiler alert: it's money).
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This review should be called "Liam Sullivan's Long Summertime Read" because it took me months to complete reading. The slothfulness of the read should reflect more on the reader than the novel, and in fact the intricate level of detail in the book may be appreciated by a slow read. Fountain's novel tells the story of the Bravo Squad whose firefight in Iraq caught on video goes viral making the ten young men instant heroes brought back to the US to be celebrated and used for a promotional tour. The majority of the novel takes place on Thanksgiving Day at a Dallas Cowboys game where the Bravos are part of the pre-game and halftime festivities and is told from the perspective of the young Texan infantryman Billy Lynn. There's little nuance in Fountain's writing as this is clearly an anti-war novel with a pile-on of hypocritical people using the Bravos to advance their agenda. The incidents of the novel also grow increasingly absurd including Billy's fling with a cheerleader and the surreal halftime show where the Bravos support the performance of Destiny's Child. My ultimate summation of this book is good but not great, where the small details stand out better than the overarching themes of the novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this one more than Yellow Birds. Although Yellow Birds did give me bad dreams, this one confirms all the cynical thoughts I have about the war on terror.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Truly amazing book. Billy Lynn is a soldier. He is one of eight soldiers of "Bravo Squad," ordinary army grunts in Iraq who one day find themselves in a brief but fierce battle that happens to be captured by their embedded reporter on video. The film of their battle makes them instant "heroes," so the pentagon decides to pull them out of Iraq and send them on a two weel "Victory Tour" around the US to drum up support for the war. The final appearance of the Tour is a Dallas Cowboys football game on Thanksgiving day. The whole story takes place on this one day, with brief flashbacks to a few scenes in the previous weeks.Fountain packs so much emotion and thought into every scene that I was often exhausted from reading, but in a good way. He manages to get you to think, but without being preachy. He is ironic, but without the smugness that often marks modern American irony. It's emotional without being maudlin, political without being partisan or polemic.This story isn't for everyone, but those who read it will be glad they did.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    The Bravo Squad is home from Iraq for a PR/victory tour after a brutal fight. They are invited to a Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving and are part of the halftime show, and they are in intense negotiations about a possible movie based on their experience. Billy Lynn, meanwhile, meets one of the cheerleaders and falls instantly in love. I know this book has received widespread critical acclaim, but it just didn't do it for me. It's one of those "poetic" books with a lot of fast-talking staccato paragraphs shot with dream-like metaphors that I would not expect to find inside a 19-year-old soldier's head. At one point Billy remembers his dead buddy telling him about good books and authors, and they were all ones I didn't care for: The Hobbit, On the Road, Hunter S. Thompson, Vonnegut, so I'm guessing the author and I just disagree on what's good. Also, the language of the book was overblown for the very obvious insights being presented. War is hell, and Americans are shallow and stupid for having supported our actions in Iraq. I get it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I somehow missed this book when it came out and only picked it up because it was #2 or #3 on the meta-lists of the best books of 2012. And it was excellent, although it would not rise to my personal #2.The book takes place over the course of a Dallas Cowboys football game on Thanksgiving Day--beginning with the limo trip to pre-game and ending with entering the limo to return after the game. The action in the book thus takes place over about as long as it takes to read the book itself.The protagonist is Billy Lynn, a genuine Silver Star-decorated war hero whose unit was captured on film by a Fox News crew, creating a viral sensation that led them to brought back to America on their victory tour. Appearing at the Dallas Cowboys halftime is the last stop on their tour and two days later they will be deployed back to Iraq.Over the course of their time they are followed around by a Hollywood producer who has optioned their story, surrounded by cheerleaders, get signed footballs from players, are paraded around by the billionaire owner, get into fights with fans, get into even worse fights with roadies, and try to meet Beyonce (the featured halftime performer). All of this is depicted in an outsized and satirical manner that is in turns flattering and oppressive to the men of what is inaccurately called Bravo squad.Although a war novel, you barely see the war--only the occasional description of the Fox News video, generally as perceived by someone meeting the soldiers, with the soldiers themselves having a very different recollection. In fact, it is more of an anti-war novel that has great respect for the troops but little-or-no respect for the prolific "honoring of the troops" by self-indulgent people, many of whom are only too happy to support someone else fighting a way.At times, especially in the first half, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk does, indeed, feel somewhat long. But it picks up with a touching love story with a cheerleader and when the Hollywood plot picks up as well.Overall, deserves a place on top 10 lists for 2012.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I am at a loss for the words to describe this poignant, moving book and I don't believe I know how to write a worthy review...I just feel like it's shook me up, much the way a true account would. Brilliantly written and a must-read for all. Get ready to question the way you feel about the Iraq War. 
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A great commentary on the way war is portrayed and perceived in America, and a sympathetic portrait of a veteran. The misadventures Billy Lynn experiences in Texas Stadium among the rabble and the wealthy are humorous without betraying the tragedy of the novel: the disconnect between the sensational picture civilians have been fed of a war in stark blacks and whites and what Billy actually goes through. Fountain's book can be pedantic, but his view of the incongruities in American culture are mostly on target.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I was very lax about writing up my reviews toward the end of the year, so I haven't said much about Billy Lynn, but it was interesting on several levels. It takes place during the 2004 Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving game halftime show. I happened to be at that show and interesting fact #2, my-very-famous-brother produced the show. I kept waiting for his character to appear, but it didn't. (Which is probably a good thing.) On a deeper level it was about the lip service Americans pay to war and warriors while having no idea of what actually happens during war and to its soldiers. And on yet another level it is about how slimy some Texans can be. And, trust me, it's pretty darn slimy.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I wanted to enjoy Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. I really expected I would. And halfway through it, I thought I was enjoying it. But by the time I reached the third act, I realized that everything was so one-dimensional. I get that as a first-person, steam-of-consciousness narrative, some things are going to be unreliable and something things will be omitted. The problem is that too many really interesting and important things are set up, but never actually happen. Chief among those is the battle that made Billy and his squad into internet stars – it is never explained what happened or why it was different. Maybe Fountain’s point is that it doesn’t matter. But it does matter when that was the premise behind all of the events taking place. Perhaps Billy’s tale is so frustrating because Billy is so one-dimensional himself. The whole point of this sort of book is to live the journey from the eyes of somebody else as events happen that force them to change or evolve. The trouble is that Billy never does change. He simply floats along through a chain of events he seems powerless to alter and uninterested in trying to. And frankly, the ending was so devoid of any hope that it made The Road feel uplifting in comparison. Maybe Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a critique on how society handles war and its participants. Unfortunately, none of the people or events felt realistic. It was like living in a caricature of how people act that left everything feeling artificial. I can see why many people like it, but the story and the characters simply didn’t feel plausible enough for me to become emotionally attached.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book was SO GOOD, and didn't even think I would like it very much. A bunch of guys (the named-for-press-purposes "Bravo squad" come back from Iraq after a highly publicized (via Fox News) fire fight, and are trotted around on a "victory tour" that ends with a PR showcase at a Cowboys-Bears football game, after which they are being redeployed. At the onset, it's clear that the major theme of the book is the inability for Billy Lynn to communicate his war experience with anyone back in the States. Going into it, I was concerned about the ability of an author to write a book about not understanding something outside of shared experience if he didn't share in that experience ... that was getting a little meta and stressed me out.Oh, but then the writing sucked me in. It's so snappy and manages to be funny and troubling and sad all at the same time. Fountain also has a great ear for dialogue, I felt like he was extremely successful at capturing slangy and informal speech without making it sound forced or dorky.I felt like the last third got a little bogged down. The first parts went back and forth between the football game and the events leading up to Bravo's appearance at halftime, so when it catches up to itself, the change in the pace of the story struck me as a little off. Not really related to the book, but "Ben Fountain" sounds like the fakest fakey name ever to me. Can that really be someone's name? I feel like it's a pun that's going over my head.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Book is brilliant. In fact it may be in my top 10 favorite books of all time. The book takes place in one day at Dallas Stadium on Thanksgiving Day. Billy and his troop members are being celebrated for a heroic action in Iraq that was captured by an in bedded camera man. Billy is a nineteen and a virgin who is slightly overwhelmed by all the hoopla. Through his eyes we see the insanity of our modern culture and war.