The Good Lieutenant by Whitney Terrell review – the Bush wars' best novel

Unlike other war fiction taking readers inside the war in Iraq, Terrell tackles the subject without being maudlin thanks in part to an ingenious structural device

Realist fiction is so often driven by the idea that character is destiny. Emma Bovary has to cheat; Jay Gatsby has to chase; Karl Ove has to chat. But war novels are different, because in a war destiny is destiny, at least in the sense of your future being distinct from your choices. Where you’re standing is destiny.

That randomness leaves the novelist, accustomed to building a linear narrative, in a difficult position. Some writers solve the problem by surrendering to it, which is why so many of the truly great war novels, from The Charterhouse of Parma to Slaughterhouse-Five to Catch-22, are essentially absurdist, moving in the gap between the grandiose myths of war and its weird local particularities, which mostly seem to involve boredom, bureaucracy and death.

Continue reading...