The Things They Carried

I had this at 3.5 stars for a minute, fearing a higher rating would betray a MN prejudice. That because O'Brien's completed his anti-war argument my the time the platoon arrives in the Song Tra Bong. He doesn't struggle with the difficult task of explaining a true war story. And that war stories need neither an ending nor make a point to be true. For me, a careful re-read, collecting annotations will guide my story-telling efforts, the chapter "How To Tell a True War Story" as the guide. The chapters are short stories in themselves, but his characters live through them, even after they are factually "dead".