I think The Yellow Birds is going to haunt me for a while. It's not a novel I was tempted to pick up on my own but I thought I might give it a try for a book club. My family has been going through some rough things lately and I'm in more of an escapism mode these days.

It's hard to say that I'm glad I read it because it filled me with such sadness. I could only read a chapter or two at a time and then stop to think over what I read before moving onwards. Sometimes I found myself openly weeping at the brutality and senselessness that surrounded our protagonist John Bartle. Were it not for the sparse but lyrical prose and the catharsis, I might have stopped reading several times. I was just that overcome. It's been a long time since a novel made such an impact on me. So no, I'm not glad to have read the novel. I'm haunted, I'm stirred up, I'm angry and sad at the senselessness of war. I'm glad to be alive and alert and aware enough to appreciate that little black marks on the page could so touch my heart.