Eat the Apple

Starred review from September 25, 2017
In this bold memoir, ex-Marine Young examines how war transformed him from a confused teenager into a dangerous and damaged man. Fresh from high school and with no direction, Young walked into a Marine recruitment center in 2005 and sealed his fate. Soon he was suffering the indignities of basic training before being deployed to “the sandbox” in Iraq, where he sweated, masturbated, shot stray dogs, and watched friends get blown up. Despite the constant misery and suffocating discipline, Young reenlisted twice more and even volunteered for Iraq on his last tour. Brief stints in the U.S. that blurred away into drunken violence and infidelity made war seem far safer to Young than civilian life. Eschewing first-person memoir conventions, Young, now a creative-writing professor at Centralia College, presents his experiences through a broad range of narrative approaches—second person, third person, first-person plural, screenplay, crude drawings, invented dialogue between various selves, etc. There’s real risk of trivializing the material, but Young matches his stylistic daring with raw honesty, humor, and pathos. Comparisons to Michael Herr’s Dispatches, about the Vietnam War, are apt, but where Herr searched for thrills and headlines as a journalist, Young writes from a grunt’s perspective that has changed little since Roman legionnaires yawned through night watch on Hadrian’s Wall: endless tedium interrupted by moments of terror and hilarity, all under a strict regime of blind obedience and foolish machismo.

November 15, 2017

Young, a fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good and creative writing professor at Centralia College, WA, tells of being a U.S. marine and serving three tours in Iraq in the mid-to-late 2000s. He does not sugarcoat the details of war or ask for forgiveness; in fact, he is not sure that he wants readers to thank him for his service. Each chapter is brief, three to four pages, and presented in varying formats, such as a screenplay and thoughts in first, second, and third person. Some chapters are written to the author's past self from his future self and one section is an apology letter to a cabbie he punched after his third tour. The difficulty of basic training is contrasted with the boredom and brutality of combat. Young's actions--cheating on his fiance, surviving an IED explosion, holding a severed head--may cause revulsion among readers or may lead to sympathy. VERDICT This honest war memoir will shock and horrify, will cause readers to tear up, and will make them wish they could tell a 19-year-old marine that everything will be okay. Highly recommended for all collections.--Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI

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