Redeployment by Phil Klay

A couple of Sundays ago, it finally got warm enough to venture out of our igloo and feet of snow to have a late lunch with one of our book club founders.  She asked me point blank why I hadn't attended any meeting in months, probably going on a year.  She speculated that it was because of one particular member who stiffed my on decorating advise.  I said no, but would not admit the real reason why:  I cannot stand reading and then talking about books that are either on Oprah's list or the best seller fiction list, essentially books about dis-functional families, frustrated women, or biased views of historical events.  So to satisfy my rebellious spirit, I read Redeployment, a recent National Book award winner, written by a former Marine who fought in the Mid-East wars, I believe had graduated from an Ivy and got his MFA from Hunter after the war.  I needed to read a "male" book.

While I have suggested to some of the men who work for me that they might want to read it, I can only give it a B-/C+.  I am not widely read in war recollections, I feel this was just an updated version, a tad less forceful, than others I have read,  Such books almost have to be written by survivors.  The lessons they learn are universal, applicable to any war.  (I compare this to a memo I was asked to edit this week at work about the difficulty of program managers talking to computer geeks, a topic that echoed all my experiences from the mid-70s).  All that was different between Redeployment and Nam was there was no fracking.  Thank God for an all volunteer/no draft military.

A collection of stories with different characters, the one I liked best was Money as a Weapons System, a story with MASH-like humor and one that had all the absurdity of governmental best intentions to far from the ground: widows becoming beekeepers, a water purification plant with an overseer on the take and pipes with too much pressure, and a women's health care center that was a success but funding ineligible.  Reading it was like a day at work.

I was thinking about telling the book club to read this.  At least it did not have "discussion questions" included in the back of the book.  But I can't and so my absences continue