Fobbit

Starred review from July 2, 2012
Abrams’s debut is a harrowing satire of the Iraq War and an instant classic. The Fobbits of the title are U.S. Army support personnel, stationed at Baghdad’s enclave of desk jobs: Forward Operating Base Triumph. Some of the soldiers, like Lt. Col. Vic Duret, are good officers pushed to the brink. Others, like Capt. Abe Shrinkle, are indecisive blowhards. But the soul of the book is Staff Sgt. Chance Gooding Jr., a public relations NCO who spends his days crafting excruciating press releases and fending off a growing sense of moral bankruptcy. A series of bombings, street battles, and media debacles test all of these men and, although there are exciting combat scenes, the book’s most riveting moments are about crafting spin, putting the “Iraqi Face” on the conflict. A sequence in which a press release is drafted and edited and scrutinized, held up for so long that its eventual release is old news, is a pointed vision of losing a public relations war. Abrams, a 20-year Army veteran who served with a public affairs team in Iraq, brings great authority and verisimilitude to his depictions of these attempts to shape the perceptions of the conflict. Abrams’s prose is spot-on and often deadpan funny, as when referring to the “warm pennies” smell of a soldier’s “undermusk of blood,” or when describing one misshapen officer: “skull too big for the stalk of his neck, arms foreshortened like a dinosaur... one word came to mind: thalidomide.” This novel nails the comedy and the pathos, the boredom and the dread, crafting the Iraq War’s answer to Catch-22. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates.

August 15, 2012
IEDs, VBIEDs, EODs, G-3 and even CNN contrive a constant Catch-22 as Fobbit Chance Gooding Jr. fights the acronym war in Abrams' debut novel. FOB is an acronym, meaning Forward Operating Base. It's 2005 in war-torn Iraq, and a Fobbit is a soldier working within that secured area, never venturing beyond the wire and guard towers to cope with AK-47-toting terrorists and improvised explosive devices. Staff Sgt. Gooding mans a computer in FOB Triumph's Public Affairs Office. Though he uses no active unit's designation, the author knows the Army, good and bad. Abrams is a 20-year veteran who served in Iraq as part of a public affairs team. While the narrative generally feeds off Gooding, it is peopled with far more outlandish and intriguing characters. One is Gooding's immediate superior, Lt. Col. Eustace Harkleroad, timid, overweight, incompetent and subject to stress nosebleeds. Bunkered in a cubicle in one of Saddam's old palaces, Gooding shoots off cliche-riddled press releases meant to obscure casualty numbers. The doublespeak must earn three chain-of-command initials before they're ready to be ignored by the media. The tipping point comes when news outlets begin to salivate over killed-in-action numbers reaching 2,000. With notations from Gooding's diary and woeful, lie-laden emails-to-mother from Harkleroad, the author's narrative reflects the Fobbit war, the heat and the sand, civilian contractors and guest workers at the FOB's burger and chicken franchises. Abrams saves his best work for two supporting characters, Lt. Col. Vic Duret, a hard-driving, stressed-out, uber-responsible battalion commander haunted by his brother-in-law's death in the World Trade Center attack, and the inept and fear-filled Capt. Abe Shrinkle, a West Pointer who bungles his way into shooting an innocent Iraqi civilian on one mission and incinerating another on the next. More a Fobbit's Jarhead than a Yossarian Catch-22, although one character meets a Kid Sampson-like fate. Sardonic and poignant. Funny and bitter. Ribald and profane. Confirmation for the anti-war crowd and bile for Bush supporters.

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July 1, 2012

Former army journalist Abrams offers a comic novel about press officers, clerks, and all noncombat military personnel at a Forward Operating Base (FOB) during the peak of violence in U.S.-occupied Iraq. Staff Sgt. Chance Gooding--while counting the days until his deployment ends--methodically translates combat reports and suicide bomber fatalities into bloodless press-release prose. After several fatal incidents of incompetance, Capt. Abe Shrinkle is transferred in disgrace from leading troops, and exiled to folding towels in the FOB gym. From there, his humiliating downward spiral is unstoppable and ends scandalously in the Australians' off-limits swimming pool. Abrams (with a nod to Catch-22) mocks the cliches of military bureaucracy, yet he frequently employs military jargon and expressions to describe the characters' thoughts and schemes for self-preservation. While the author paints with broad satirical strokes, the book offers a unique behind-the-wire glimpse at life at the FOB and the process of "spinning" a war for public consumption. VERDICT A funny, hard-edged satire about recent history and modern war-making, suitable for adult general fiction readers. [See Prepub Alert, 4/19/12.]--John Cecil, Austin, TX

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2012
In west Baghdad, while the infantry fights the war on terrorism, a team of public affairs soldiers play computer solitaire and clip toenails in the relative safety of the Forward Operating Base (FOB), waiting for the latest death reports. This is the story of the Fobbits, as they're pejoratively called, and, in particular, Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding Jr., who types up the latest suicide bombing into something palatable for Americans digesting his words over breakfast. It's the story of Lieutenant Colonel Vic Duret, knee-deep in the heat, stench, and gore of combat instead of working on nation rebuilding, who hates those Fobbits in their cushy cubicles avoiding combat. It's the story of incompetent Captain Abe Shrinkle, who has something to prove and becomes a burr in the boot of the U.S. Army. First-novelist Abrams punches up the grittiness of war with the dark, cynical humor that comes from living it (he served as a Fobbit in Iraq), crafting images that will haunt readers long after they pry their grip from the book. Think M.A.S.H. in Iraq.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)