Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War

 I’ve always found that fiction that needs a glossary, a list of characters and a map is the work of a writer too unskilled to incorporate those things into the work as that writer tells the story and takes 566 pages to do it.
 In this case—and probably others—I was wrong.
 Karl Marlantes’s Matterhorn: A novel of the Vietnam War is that engrossing that you put up with the add ons. The glossary, by the way, is a welcome read by itself, with illuminating definitions of words and equipment you might think you already know all about. (I’ve long known that M-16s were the standard-issue automatic rifle used in Vietnam, but I didn’t know that the 5.56-millimeter bullet they fired was intended to wound rather than kill.)
 The main action takes place in 1969 on a fictitious mountain, Matterhorn, just a few miles from Laos and even closer to the demilitarized zone separating North and South Vietnam. The story is told in the second person from the point of view of Waino Mellas, an Ivy League graduate who joined the Marines after graduating from Princeton and is now a second lieutenant reservist. (Marlantes, 71, is a Yale graduate and Rhodes Scholar who left after one semester to volunteer for active duty in the Marine Corps.)

Anyone familiar with how the military works won’t be surprised by the juxtaposition of gross incompetence and waste with admiral heroism and intelligence as Marines go without food and water for days at a time, soldiers die due to lack of medivac capabilities, and leeches and jungle rot make life generally miserable.
 Marlantes is no poet, but you wouldn’t want one to write this. He’s clear and direct, with an astonishing ability to recall the details of what happened decades ago and to reproduce them in a book published in 2010. Although Marlantes may be no Updike, his prose does soar at times, like this description of the main character during a desperate moment of attack:

He ran as he’d never run before, with neither hope nor despair. He ran because the world was divided into opposites and his side had already been chosen for him, his only choice being whether or not play his part with heart and courage. He ran because fate had placed him in a position of responsibility and he had accepted his burden. He ran because his self-respect required it. He ran because he loved his friends and this was the only thing he could do to end the madness that was killing and maiming them. He ran directly at the bunker where the grenades from Jake’s M-79 were exploding. The bullets from the M-60 machine gun slammed through the air to his right, slashing past him, whining like tortured cats, cracking like the bullwhip of death. He ran, having never felt so alone and frightened in his life.