The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

The Yellow Birds

Kevin Powers

Though primarily a novel about war and its psychological impact, this is also a story of friendship and loss. There were times when I had to lay the book aside in an effort to absorb what I had read and because I hardly dared to continue. A powerful, moving and beautifully written book, made more so I felt for having been written by an Iraq War veteran.

Extract
What happened? What fucking happened? That's not even the question, I thought. How is that the question? How do you answer the unanswerable To say what happened, the mere facts, the disposition of events in time, would come to seem like a kind of treachery. The dominoes of moments, lined up symmetrically, then tumbling backward against the hazy and unsure push of cause, showed only that a fall is every object's destiny. It is not enough to say what happened. Everything happened. Everything fell.
Parallels
  • The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
  • The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
  • Soldier's Song - song by Lucinda Williams