bookrec's review
4.0
This book was recommended in the Chicago Tribune just this Sunday. It tells the story of his life in Iraq & after he is home. You get a real feel for what these guys go thru. He was in the bomb squad so everyday he had a real good chance of not making it home. The book can be a little unsettling. He tells you right off the bat he is CRAZY. You get to see why.
bobbo49's review
3.0
I heard an interview with the author on NPR, and the book provides an insider's view of the war in Iraq by an explosives ordnance demolition expert - someone who is called in to blow up i.e.d.s, or to survey the site after one explodes. This is an incredibly intense and close-up look at the impact of war on the lives of the soldiers and civilians at its epicenter, including particularly the lingering effects of ptsd and traumatic brain injuries on the military and their families. Castner is a soldier, not a writer, but his book is thought-provoking and distressing.
brockboland's review against another edition
5.0
Heart-wrenching and surprisingly poetic. Reads more like a novel than a memoir.
mxinevitable's review
5.0
Great book on powering through war and is aftermath. Great if you want to know about EOD roles and great if you want to hear stories of PTSD in veterans.
balzat28's review against another edition
4.0
There are thousands upon thousands of war memoirs out there--a testament to the unending richness of history but also, paradoxically, the frequency and magnitude with which we as a country go to war. These memoirs--so rich and significant, so important--can only be written by those who survive the most horrific experiences imaginable, and thus our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live--our collective history as a species--is nourished on the sweat, blood, and nightmares of soldiers. For every Born on the Fourth of July, Jarhead, or With the Old Breed, there are millions of other stories that go unwritten, untold, unpublished, and forgotten. Not every soldier will live to tell their story of war, and not every survivor of war will tell their story while alive. These stories are perhaps the most important that can be told, and each is worth its weight in ink and paper, if not more so.
But where most of these memoirs are crucial parts of history, there are very few that can also be considered good literature--that is, something that does more than tell a story from Point A to Point B, or about Persons A through E and what they did at Events 1 through 10. There are those few soldiers who are gifted enough to channel their experiences through more than pure recollection--Brian Turner's poetry collection Here, Bullet and Tim O'Brien's novel-memoir The Things They Carried are the two examples that come immediately to mind--but when they do, it adds even more depth to an already profound story.
Brian Castner's The Long Walk is an example of that kind of book. An EOD technician, Castner moves between his experiences defusing IEDs during the Iraq War and struggling to re-acclimate to civilian life once his tour of duty has ended. Memories of he and his team approaching strange, dangerous contraptions in the sweltering Iraqi weather, their bodies weighed down by 80 pounds of gear while unseen forces shoot at them, move suddenly into Castner swimming through 12-packs of beer on the couch, going between the floors of the local VA hospital, and taking yoga classes in the hopes of ridding himself of the spider-like "Crazy" that has nested in his brain. He runs, he is tested by doctors, a bomb explodes, the yoga teacher twists herself in front of him, he steps in liquefied intestines, he takes his son to school, a phone rings in that emptiness of night, he dresses his son for hockey, he is insubordinate, he is diagnosed, he is sane, he is insane. It all moves together as one, as though his time in war and time in peace were melting together as one until he is a man in both worlds and neither world at the same time. His everyday life is filled with the chaos of war--he has an imaginary gun with him at all times, and his eyes scout for men who seem suspiciously familiar--while his memories are dominated by endless hours of waiting for IEDs to be reported, for his team to approach and defuse, of the camaraderie and sense of purpose he felt while the world around him fell away into thunder and fire.
This balance is what gives Castner's memoirs its literary depth and makes it a rarity among the countless other books to come out of the last decade of war. Were this book stripped of its cover and any biographical information on the author, you'd be tempted to think of it as a clever novel of sorts--a look at how, as Castner's grandmother-in-law tells his wife, war will kill the men it saves and send back someone new. There would be unfair comparisons to The Hurt Locker, some discussion of how expertly the novelist avoids one Hollywood-war-movie cliche after another--the nighttime scene in which a lowly pigeon brings forth a discussion about what the men will do when they return home is formulaic and saccharine, the critics would say in one voice--and a general sense that this writer, though promising, has watched Saving Private Ryan one too many times. But it's obviously real, still fresh and alive in Castner's mind--even his wife says his ability to remember even the most inconsequential of details is both amazing and frustrating--and it's a testament to Castner's skills as a writer that, more often than not, the reader questions what they're reading--the outlandishness, the carnage, the extremeness of all that's written down. After all, what better compliment to give a memoirist of war--and what darker condemnation to set upon the homeland reader--than to write about the world as it is and find resistence from those who find safety behind sanitized fantasies of how the world isn't. "This can't be real," the reader tells themselves, searching the cover for reassurance that this is just a novel, a story, a fabrication. "No one could survive this. This can't be happening now, not in my lifetime, to my friends and neighbors."
It is, and if the shelves of libraries and bookstores and archives are any proof, it will forever be.
This review was originally published at There Will Be Books Galore.
But where most of these memoirs are crucial parts of history, there are very few that can also be considered good literature--that is, something that does more than tell a story from Point A to Point B, or about Persons A through E and what they did at Events 1 through 10. There are those few soldiers who are gifted enough to channel their experiences through more than pure recollection--Brian Turner's poetry collection Here, Bullet and Tim O'Brien's novel-memoir The Things They Carried are the two examples that come immediately to mind--but when they do, it adds even more depth to an already profound story.
Brian Castner's The Long Walk is an example of that kind of book. An EOD technician, Castner moves between his experiences defusing IEDs during the Iraq War and struggling to re-acclimate to civilian life once his tour of duty has ended. Memories of he and his team approaching strange, dangerous contraptions in the sweltering Iraqi weather, their bodies weighed down by 80 pounds of gear while unseen forces shoot at them, move suddenly into Castner swimming through 12-packs of beer on the couch, going between the floors of the local VA hospital, and taking yoga classes in the hopes of ridding himself of the spider-like "Crazy" that has nested in his brain. He runs, he is tested by doctors, a bomb explodes, the yoga teacher twists herself in front of him, he steps in liquefied intestines, he takes his son to school, a phone rings in that emptiness of night, he dresses his son for hockey, he is insubordinate, he is diagnosed, he is sane, he is insane. It all moves together as one, as though his time in war and time in peace were melting together as one until he is a man in both worlds and neither world at the same time. His everyday life is filled with the chaos of war--he has an imaginary gun with him at all times, and his eyes scout for men who seem suspiciously familiar--while his memories are dominated by endless hours of waiting for IEDs to be reported, for his team to approach and defuse, of the camaraderie and sense of purpose he felt while the world around him fell away into thunder and fire.
This balance is what gives Castner's memoirs its literary depth and makes it a rarity among the countless other books to come out of the last decade of war. Were this book stripped of its cover and any biographical information on the author, you'd be tempted to think of it as a clever novel of sorts--a look at how, as Castner's grandmother-in-law tells his wife, war will kill the men it saves and send back someone new. There would be unfair comparisons to The Hurt Locker, some discussion of how expertly the novelist avoids one Hollywood-war-movie cliche after another--the nighttime scene in which a lowly pigeon brings forth a discussion about what the men will do when they return home is formulaic and saccharine, the critics would say in one voice--and a general sense that this writer, though promising, has watched Saving Private Ryan one too many times. But it's obviously real, still fresh and alive in Castner's mind--even his wife says his ability to remember even the most inconsequential of details is both amazing and frustrating--and it's a testament to Castner's skills as a writer that, more often than not, the reader questions what they're reading--the outlandishness, the carnage, the extremeness of all that's written down. After all, what better compliment to give a memoirist of war--and what darker condemnation to set upon the homeland reader--than to write about the world as it is and find resistence from those who find safety behind sanitized fantasies of how the world isn't. "This can't be real," the reader tells themselves, searching the cover for reassurance that this is just a novel, a story, a fabrication. "No one could survive this. This can't be happening now, not in my lifetime, to my friends and neighbors."
It is, and if the shelves of libraries and bookstores and archives are any proof, it will forever be.
This review was originally published at There Will Be Books Galore.
nonna7's review
5.0
"The first thing you should know about me is that I'm crazy." The author, a bronze star decorated former EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) specialist who served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them as the commander of an EOD unit. If you want to be impressed by a person, read this book. No, not because he's a "hero." (I hate that overused word!) Read this book so you can meet a man who writes so vividly that it's practically impossible to put this book down. Meet a man who is passionate about what he did, who conveys the excitement, the adrenaline rush so thoroughly that for a moment - fleeting - but a moment, you are just a little envious. One of his buddies says that he never felt so alive as when his life was in danger. Another says he will keep coming back as long as they'll let him because "my brothers" are here. You will also accompany him to a funeral of one of his closest friends, run with him and his friend, Ricky, as he tries to outrun the "crazy" that won't leave. He describes it as a spider in his head. Talk about a gruesome yet vivid metaphor - I can still picture that spider as he describes it. In fact, I may DREAM about that spider tonight. We're with him as they defuse bombs - or go on a mission to find bomb making materials, but fail spectacularly because the intel was wrong. (When he comes back from the mission empty handed he is told "You have the blood of soldiers on your hands.") Meet "Murphy's Law," a totem consisting of a stick with a gorilla head on the top where "offerings" in the form of beer, cigarettes and porn magazines are made in the hopes that "Murphy's Law" won't kick in when they are out in the field and suddenly discover they are missing something they thought they packed. You'll laugh, but only for a moment. While riding through the town, Castner has seen stand after stand selling watermelons. Finally, he can't stand it, and, in full combat gear, jumps down and buys two watermelons from a local farmer. Later that night they drink beer and eat watermelon, spitting out the seeds like teenage boys. It's when he describes being at home that is the most heart-wrenching. He fights the "crazy" every day by running, by visits to the military hospital, by taking yoga classes. In one scene, he describes looking at his sleeping two week old son. He describes in way too vivid detail what horrible things could happen to him. He spends that night on the steps, holding his rifle, guarding his son from harm. This is riveting. Don't miss it.
jennybun's review
emotional
reflective
sad
4.0
A powerful look into one veteran's mind.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness and Gore
Moderate: War
destiny_jay's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
dsmagacz's review against another edition
4.0
I gave this book a high rating because I learned so much about war that I never even knew. The book was very disturbing to me. Firstly, it gave me a picture of what goes on in the life of a soldier. The gut wrenching fear mixed with some sort of loyalty to our country. I saw the fierce 'brotherhood' they developed to support each other because the stake of losing their lives was so high.
Was it worth the turmoil of one man and his family? In essence his life was lost in the war, even though be all accounts he survived.
Was it worth the turmoil of one man and his family? In essence his life was lost in the war, even though be all accounts he survived.
upthescene's review
5.0
I'm not sure why I didn't hear more about this gem when it first came out - I was definitely working in a bookstore at the time.
This is one of the two best fiction books I've read on the subject of the Iraq War (the other being The Yellow Birds). It's also up there with the most well thought-out and best edited short story collections.
Highly recommended.
This is one of the two best fiction books I've read on the subject of the Iraq War (the other being The Yellow Birds). It's also up there with the most well thought-out and best edited short story collections.
Highly recommended.