The first two words that come to mind are contrived and overlong. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started this, but I came to it through its association with Tim O'Brien, with Fountain even appearing in the docuentary about O'Brien's writer's block. But this book seems more of a farce than anything else. It is more about Texas than it is about Iraq, and it is more about the Dallas Cowboys that it is about Texas. It is filled with stereotypes or stand-ins for real persons (e.g., Cowboys owner Jerry Jones), and it has lots of undeniably effective scenes. But the 19-year old soldier who is the focal point of the close third-person narrative would seem to be incapable of the thoughts and conclusions the author puts in his head--so all I really hear is Fountain talking.

Let me be clear, the war in Iraq was unnecessary and never should have occurred. It's only in the even worse aftermath of the Trump Administration that we forget how awful and filled with lies the George W. Bush Administration was. Nevertheless, when I see the awards this book won and was nominated for, it's clear they were awarded because the author's political viewpoint is in line with those who hand out such awards, not for its literary merit. The war scenes, especially, strive for something profound but fall far short. Fountain doesn't seem to have had any personal experience, as did O'Brien, or as did Kent Anderson, whose Sympathy for the Devil is about the best-written most numbing war book you'll ever read.

I realize, of course, that it wasn't Fountain's goal. This, again, I assume is a farce and a satire on American's obsession with war so long as they don't have to fight it themselves. Setting the whole novel at an interminable Dallas Cowboys football game, with some interspersed flashbacks, is fairly clever, since the second-hand pride and patriotism people feel because of what Billy and his fellow soldiers (Bravo Squad) did in Iraq is matched by the personal pride these same citizens take in the success of their overpaid steroid-taking athletic heroes.

The audiobook runs for over 13 hours, which is just way too long (even though it is well read). It doesn't seem that the game is ever going to end. But, as much as I feel this book falls short of greatness, I do agree that the author's motivations and observations about America are pretty much on target. And the characters of Billy's sisters, mother, and father seem like real people as well. Then there's the romance, but that is so much out of a fairy tale, that I just don't quite know what to make of it. Nice people pop up at Texas Stadium among the turds, and that pretty much describes the experience of reading (or listening to) this book. I wouldn't recommend it. (Read samchan's review, which is a lot more critical than mine, but with which I still agree 100%.) ( )

Entertaining novel about a team of soldiers returning from Iraq for 2 weeks to be feted as heroes after being involved in a televised skirmish with insurgents. Most of the novel takes place at a Dallas Cowboys game where they are being honoured at half-time. It's a fairly black comedy, although contrary to the quotes it is no Catch-22.

The main characters are well defined, although there seems (to this bleeding-heart liberal) a left-wing bias (i.e., most of the sympathetic characters have some liberal leanings). I liked the charismatic sergeant characters, though questioned whether a single team would have two such iconoclasts - stretched my credulity a bit.

Fountain plays around with some experimental techniques - structured layout of text, word-cloud-type constructions - and tries to convey the actual mental state of the soldiers, and what effect war and death has on a young person. Good attempts without being revolutionary.

Overall, it's enjoyable, but maybe less than the sum of its parts (and the title doesn't really work). This would be a 3.5, but I'll bump up. ( )

Very entertaining satirical anti-war or perhaps anti-American culture novel. National Book Award finalist. ( )

The cover of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk trumpets it as Catch-22 for the Iraq War. While that's the hyperbole you'd expect from a cover blurb, there's an element of truth in it. The book does hold a mirror up to US society and the rather strange way that many Americans related to the war in Iraq as something noble and admirable, but not something they needed to actually make any sacrifices for, or get personally involved in.

Billy Lynn is an infantry grunt who gets involved in a battle that is captured on video by an embedded camera team. He and the rest of his Bravo squad are filmed rushing to the rescue of a fallen comrade and wiping out an insurgent cell against great odds. After screening on Fox News, the video goes viral and Bravo are American heroes du jour.

The Bravo squad are brought back home for a Victory Tour, which is pretty transparently a war propaganda exercise. Fountain gently mocks the earnestness with which rich Americans cozy up to the Bravos and make lots of noises about thanking them for their sacrifice and supporting the troops. Yet when the rights are discussed for a Hollywood film about Bravo's accomplishments, there is surprising little eagerness to thank and support them in any material sense.

Most of the book takes place on the last day of the Tour, where the Bravos are the guests of the Dallas Cowboys at a game. The owner and his coterie fawn all over the soldiers and wheel them around in a fashion that is blatantly about using their heroics to promote the game. Meanwhile the film rights negotiations are stalled, the soldiers are getting drunk and stroppy, and Billy is falling in love with a cheerleader while his sister hounds him via text to desert. All this occurs while Billy is keenly aware that the next day he will be winging his way bcd to Iraq, with no certainty that he will survive.

Fountain does a splendid job of juxtaposing the romanticised view of the soldiers' heroics held by the Stateside war supporters, who gush their support without ever dreaming of making a real contribution, with the reality of these rough-and-tumble poorly-educated street kids who are honestly described by their sergeant to one fan's horror as "cold-blooded killers".

Billy himself is a really sympathetic character; a poorly-educated juvenile criminal who signed up to avoid jail and then found himself a Youtube hero without even understanding why. He tries to puzzle through the reactions to Bravo's battle and reconcile them with his own experience. As he does so, you suspect that even as a 19 year old, there is a battle-hardened wisdom in Billy that the wheelers and dealers who try to exploit him will never attain.

Fountain's book does not go near Heller in terms of nailing the insanity of war, but he does an excellent job of capturing the emptiness of the "support-the-troops" rhetoric from people who do nothing more than watch the war on TV. If I would fault this book, I think it would be that Fountain doesn't do more with the actual battle. I was expecting him to flesh the battle out as the plot developed to give us more insight into Billy and his comrades-in-arms, but Fountain drops it about one-third of the way through and chooses instead to focus on events at the game. I also think more could have been done with the sub-plot regarding Billy's temptation to desert, which was pretty cursorily dealt with. These are not major concerns however; the book is still an excellent read. ( )

I liked this book much more than I thought I was going to. Highly vivid, it makes you feel right there "in the moment" with Billy on that one Sunday afternoon. Hugely successful at contrasting the reality being lived by the remote and hidden away soldiers of the "all volunteer" US military fighting the "war on terror", and the empty patriorism of the American public at home who haven't a clue about what it's really like and why it is even happening at all. Not that the soldiers know that either, which only compounds the tragedy. Add in the chilling pictures of who really holds power in America and you begin to understand why this book has received the acclaim it has. ( )