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Bring Out the Dog
Bring Out the Dog: Stories | Will Mackin
1 post | 3 read | 6 to read
A near-miraculous, brilliant debut.George Saunders, Man Booker Prizewinning author of Lincoln in the Bardo In one exquisitely crafted story after the next, Will Mackin maps the surreal psychological terrain of soldiers in a perpetual war.Phil Klay, National Book Awardwinning author of Redeployment The eleven stories in Will Mackins mesmerizing debut collection draw from his many deployments with a special operations task force in Iraq and Afghanistan. They began as notes he jotted on the inside of his forearm in grease pencil and, later, as bullet points on the torn-off flap of an MRE kit. Whenever possible he incorporated those notes into his journals. Years later, he used those journals to write this book. Together, the stories in Bring Out the Dog offer a remarkable portrait of the absurdity and poetry that define life in the most elite, clandestine circles of modern warfare. It is a world of intense bonds, ancient credos, and surprising compassionof success, failure, and their elusive definitions. Moving between settings at home and abroad, in vivid language that reflects the wonder and discontent of war, Mackin draws the reader into a series of surreal, unsettling, and deeply human episodes: In Crossing the River No Name, a close call suggests that miracles do exist, even if they are in brutally short supply; in Great Circle Route Westward Through Perpetual Night, the death of the teams beloved dog plunges them into a different kind of grief; in Kattekoppen, a man struggles to reconcile his commitments as a father and his commitments as a soldier; and in Bakers Strong Point, a man whose job it is to pull things together struggles with a loss of control. Told without a trace of false bravado and with a keen, Barry Hannahlike sense of the absurd, Bring Out the Dog manages to capture the tragedy and heroism, the degradation and exultation, in the smallest details of war. Advance praise for Bring Out the Dog Good stories that deal with war must deal with the extremes of war: heroic altruism and murderous selfishness, piercing beauty and disgusting ugliness. Mackin hits all the notes and all the notes sound true. These stories are right at the top with the best Ive ever read.Karl Marlantes, New York Times bestselling author of Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War
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Something of a jolt, the perspective reversal reading these shorts by a US Navy special ops vet stationed in Afghanistan just after Kochai‘s Afghan shorts. Mostly arcless, more like snapshots than stories. Petty squabbles hiding deeper hurts. Some beautiful imagery, but surface, not getting inside like Tim O‘Brien. Fave: “Great Circle Route Westward Through Perpetual Night.” P 96, “We could forgive fear, but not the inability to control it.” 2018