I purchased a copy of Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds after Dave Eggers recommended it in Huck Magazine a couple of months ago.  It’s a bit of a departure for me, reading a war novel.  On top of that, it’s been a while since I really made a point of reading newer fiction.  Still, a recommendation by Eggers is about as good as they come.

The Yellow Birds tells the story of Bartle and Murphy, two privates serving in Al Tafar, Iraq.  Both are young.  In an unguarded moment, Bartle promises Murphy’s mother that he will bring her son home safely.  The novel is the story of how that didn’t happen.  The story is told in two timelines, alternating between the events leading up to Murph’s death and the events that happen to Bartle after Murph’s death.

I know absolutely nothing about the reality of war, but I’d like to think that I know a little bit about good writing.  The Yellow Birds is written well. It’s the kind of book you wish high school seniors could read . . . except for the rough language and gruesome imagery.  It handles issues of youth and honor and friendship extremely well.  It reads so clearly, almost like non-fiction.  The novel’s narrative is one of the most articulate and honest voices I’ve read in a good while.  From the book’s fifth chapter (Richmond, VA):

Clouds spread out over the Atlantic like soiled linens on an unmade bed.  I knew, watching them, that if in any given moment a measurement could be made it would show how tentative was my mind’s mastery over my heart.  Such small arrangements make a life, and though it’s hard to get close to saying what the heart is, it must at least be that which rushes to spill out of those parentheses which were the beginning and the end of my war: the old life disappearing into the dust that hung and hovered over Nineveh even before it could be recalled and longed for young and unformed as it was, already broken by the time I reached the furthest working of my memory.  I was going home.

You can read more about Kevin Powers at his website.  You can also read some of his thoughts about reading and writing in this article recently posted in the New York Times Sunday Book Review.  If you do read the book, let me know.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.