Review
Youngblood airlifts readers into the Iraq War, and through Matt Gallagher's eyes we find the place unsettlingly intimate, sublimely corporeal, ribald and gripping. With the promise of withdrawal shimmering on the horizon, Gallagher's LT Jack is a mesmerizing narrator, the Charles Marlow of Iraq, urging our vessel deeper into a land of secrets and veils, deeper into the anarchic and ambivalent psyches of the men both occupying and being occupied. This muscular novel cements Gallagher's role as our essential biographer of the forever war.
--Claire Vaye Watkins, award-winning author of Gold Fame Citrus
Youngblood is not only a 'war novel, ' it is a rich, fully formed, and beautifully executed novel-novel, way beyond the chicken coops of genre, a novel about the human heart in contest with itself, a novel about memory and longing and grief and hope and guilt and late-night ironies that raise a chuckle to the lips of the dead. Yes, the people and events in this fine novel are certainly 'tangled up' with war, as the author puts it on page one, but it is the same sort of entanglement that Lord Jim has with the ocean, or the sort of entanglement that Huck Finn has with the river.--Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried
"'iCasualties', 'electricity recons', and 'Mesopotamian Cadillacs';'finding out on Facebook that your fiance's dead. Gallagher humanizes these--war's--alien and extraordinary elements. Youngblood is a beautiful book. It will break your heart."--Lea Carpenter, critically-acclaimed author of Eleven Days
"A gripping, compelling novel about war and country by an exceedingly talented veteran of Iraq who writes with a soldier's eye and a poet's soul. Youngblood is a captivating story of hope and loss, love and ruin that transports readers to the war as it was felt and lived - by Americans and Iraqis alike. It clearly deserves a place on the top shelf of American war literature." --General (Ret.) David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq (2003-2004), Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq (2004-2005), Multinational Force-Iraq (2007-2008), and U.S. Central Command (2008-2010)
"Thrilling, tragic, and darkly funny, Matt Gallagher's Youngblood is a brilliant portrait of command in the modern, morally bruising battlefield."--Phil Klay, New York Times bestselling author of Redeployment
A flat-out great novel about the Iraq war and about much, much more. It's truthful, urgent, grave and darkly funny. Everyone should read it.--Richard Ford
In 1926 Ernest Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises, portrayed the generation of men and women living in the wake of World War I, an unflinching portrait of their weaknesses and strengths. Matt Gallagher writes with much the same artistry and intent, this time illuminating the lives of men and women and children--American and Iraqi--trying to survive the war in Iraq. Youngblood is so good I couldn't help but think of old Hemingway's debut. Let this novel serve as your introduction to a bold, brilliant talent.--Victor LaValle, author of The Devil in Silver
Not only does Youngblood rank among the very best books of our seemingly endless Iraq war, it's one of the best novels I've ever read of war, period. A mystery as taut as that of any thriller lies at the heart of the story, and as the layers peel away and the mystery coils tighter and tighter, grim truths are revealed about love, loyalty, violence, power--about life in a very hard place made so much harder by years of war. Matt Gallagher's fierce, brilliant novel should serve as a slap in the face to a culture that's grown all too comfortable with the notion of endless war.--Ben Fountain, New York Times bestselling author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
"A timely and moving story of the realities and psychological consequences of war."-- "Harper's Bazaar"
"A complex tale about the Iraq War, intrigue, love, and survival. Gallagher follows up on his successful first book, the memoir Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War (2010), with a smart Iraq War novel that adds something new to the genre--new genres. Gallagher subtly weaves throughout this excellent, brutal tale intrigue, a mystery, and two compelling love stories... A fresh twist on the Iraq War novel adds depth to this burgeoning genre."-- "Kirkus, starred review"
About the Author
Matt Gallagher is a Wake Forest graduate and US Army veteran. He's the author of the novels
Youngblood and the memoir
Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War. He holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia and has written for
The New York Times,
The Atlantic,
Esquire,
and
The Paris Review. He lives with his wife and son in Brooklyn.
