The Yellow Birds in Around the World

Sep 29, 2012 Marieke rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, united-states, 2013, iraq, military

I had some trouble while I read this book. I was expecting to get thoroughly absorbed in it, but somehow I failed to connect with the narrator or any of the main characters. I also had trouble figuring out the basis for the bond between the narrator and Murph. And for me, the writing was almost overdone: too beautiful and too lush. I thought I was going to give it two or three stars.

Yet I feel a bit haunted by this story after having finished it earlier this week. I think overall, despite my com ...more

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Jan 02, 2013 Suzanne rated it liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, around-my-bookshelf-year-3, book-club-2016

Good first novel by Iraq War Veteran Kevin Powers. From the beginning, his eloquence charms and jars you simultaneously.

"The war tried to kill us in the spring. As grass greened the plains of Nineveh and the weather warmed, we patrolled the low slung hills beyond the cities and towns."

The plot centers around 21 year old Private Bartle who is ordered to look after 18 year old Private Murphy in battle-ridden Al-Tafar, Iraq. Bartle resents having to look after this younger soldier and doesn't want ...more

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Nov 08, 2012 Kate Z rated it really liked it

This is a beautifully written book told by Private Bartle about six months of fighting as a machine gunner in the Al Tafar area of Iraq. The time frame switches back and forth from the fall of 2004 when the main action of the story took place, winter of 2003 when Bartle first met his main commanding officer Sterling and the private, Murphy, who will become his de-facto best friend on on whom the story hinges. Some events of the novel also take place in 2005 after Private Bartle returns home.

I re ...more

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Apr 30, 2013 mussolet rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: language-english, fav-read-2013, 2021-sorted, 2024-shelf-challenge, region-middle-east, rating-5stars-fiction-nf, theme-war

Review crossposted to my 238 books in 238 days-challenge.
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"The Yellow Birds" offers glimpses into a young man's time in the U.S. Army serving in Iraq and surviving back home.

Kevin Powers has been lauded for his poetical writing style to contrast the gritty reality of war. And it is true, there is a dreamlike quality to his writing, even though it feels sparse. We get impressions of the things he sees, but there isn't much talk about feeling. There isn't a lot of action (certainly less tha Review crossposted to my 238 books in 238 days-challenge.
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"The Yellow Birds" offers glimpses into a young man's time in the U.S. Army serving in Iraq and surviving back home.

Kevin Powers has been lauded for his poetical writing style to contrast the gritty reality of war. And it is true, there is a dreamlike quality to his writing, even though it feels sparse. We get impressions of the things he sees, but there isn't much talk about feeling. There isn't a lot of action (certainly less than I would have expected), instead we get to experience sleep-deprived boys waiting for something, anything to happen, and yet knowing that it probably won't matter anyway.

""How many times have we been through that orchard, through this town, sir?", a PCF from third squad asked.
"The army?"
"Yes, sir."
"This makes three."
"All in the fall?"
"Yeah, seems like we're fighting over this town every year."
[...] "Maybe they'll make it an annual thing.""

I had often wondered what motivated boys to enlist, and for our two main characters the answer is frighteningly simple - there wasn't much else to do. For the author himself it was a way into university. It is hard for young boys and their parents when they know that they've made the right choice in the circumstances, yet there is no way to prepare for what might happen.

The narrative of "The Yellow Birds" jumps around in time. I don't know if I care much for the mystery surrounding our soldier's friend but I suppose it is necessary to create a plot that helps the reader to follow a journey. What it means though is that we get to see the lives of the families back home, and even our main character trying to understand ordinary life again after he is discharged. His thoughts move too fast for him to be able to talk, and at one time he literally goes on for pages without a break. This section felt more heartbreaking than the scenes of war; possibly because I can understand not being able to master your own thoughts, or possibly because, even after all the pictures I've seen on the news and descriptions I've read in books, I'm still unable to comprehend the reality of war.

Our main character knows that his experiences will make him an outsider, even when he's still fighting in Iraq. He would seem like Frodo, saving something for others when that same thing has been lost to him, if he was still able to feel enough to make sense of it.

"I was an intruder, at best a visitor, and would be even in my home, in my misremembered history, until the glow of phosphorescence in the Chesapeake I had longed to swim inside again someday became a taunt against my insignificance, a cruel trick of light that had always made me think of stars. No more. I gave up longing, because I was sure that anything seen at such a scale would reveal the universe as cast aside and drowned, and if I ever floated there again, out where the level of the water reached my neck, and my feet lost contact with its muddy bottom, I might realize that to understand the world, one's place in it, is to be always at the risk of drowning."

I wonder if writing this book helped Kevin Powers to deal with his own demons. I hope it did.
There's been a lot of praise for it, and rightly so. There's been even more talk in the press about the reasons behind this war, and I feel it is important to push the politics to the background for a few moments and see real people whose lives have been afflicted by it.
I can't help but think what would have happened, and how soldiers would be treated back home, if the war had not happened thousands of miles away. When our main character gets back to the U.S., he does a short psych evaluation, and then goes back home, meeting people who see him as a hero or people who are angry with the enemy on his account. He is detached from all that, just wants to be forgotten, and it seems to me that that is just too easily done.

"I'd been trained to think war was the great unifier, that it brought people closer together than any other activity on earth. Bullshit. War is the great maker of solipsists: how are you going to save my life today? Dying would be one way. If you die, it becomes more likely that I will not."

...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Rosana rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio-books, bookish-w13-challenge, 2013

Can one speak poetically of war? Well, this book is proof that it is possible. I really enjoyed, and I want to recommend to everyone around me. Yet, I don’t intend to ever read it again, I found it unbearably painful.

A disclaimer is necessary, I listened to it in audiobook, a format that I wonder added to it after reading other reviewers who found the writing contrived.

I posted in another discussion board the fact that I wanted to make this book mandatory reading in High Schools. My comment wa ...more

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Apr 29, 2013 Sara rated it liked it

Shelves: 2013, 52-around-the-world, award-winners, historical-fiction, iraq

“There is a sharp distinction between what is remembered, what is told and what is true.”

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Dec 31, 2012 Jenna Garrett rated it really liked it

Shelves: around-the-world, middle-east

This was a short book that was a fast read (I read it in a day of travel) but in retrospect, I wish I had taken my time reading it. The narrator is a young soldier in the Iraq war, and I was impressed by how both the structure of the novel and the style of the prose itself projected the protagonist's PTSD. I appreciated that Powers showed (without telling) the different manifestations of the effects of war on mental health. Amazing first novel. ...more

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