Hardcover, 598 pages
English language
Published June 2, 2010 by Atlantic Monthly.
Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and James Jones's The Thin Red Line. It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.
Written over the course of thirty years by …
Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and James Jones's The Thin Red Line. It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.
Written over the course of thirty years by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, Matterhorn is a visceral and spellbinding novel about what it is like to be a young man at war. It is an unforgettable novel that transforms the tragedy of Vietnam into a powerful and universal story of courage, camaraderie, and sacrifice: a parable not only of the war in Vietnam but of all war, and a testament to the redemptive power of literature.
Well, the best I've read anyway. Excellently conveys the tedium and the terror of war. Characters are very well drawn, and like their comrades we mourn their deaths when they inevitably occur. Not for the faint-hearted but a wonderful read
I gave it 5 stars but really feel like 4 1/2. The fact that this is the first "war book" I ever read, and actually wanted to keep reading says a lot. It was a good story, gave a real visceral feeling of what it was like to be in the bush. And it gave a glimpse of the politics and positioning, behind the scenes ,of the men who made the USMC their career.
Not one for reading books from a Marine officer's perspective, I did not think I would enjoy this, and I'm not even sure why I have it. But it was a stunning read. Really captured the absurdity, brutality and inanity of the war. It felt honest, which is what I appreciate most. And if things were this messed up from the invader's side of things, imagine what was inflicted on the Vietnamese, who hardly enter into the equation in this novel. Well, that actually doesn't have to be imagined, as it has been well documented.
