O'Brien Never Disappoints | July, July

Great Entertaining Read | July, July | Tim O'Brien

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	• July, July Tim O'Brien Penguin (Non-Classics), 2003 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 47 reviews view larger image
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Packs a wallop

I have read with dismay some of the negative reviews of this amazing text. Frankly, I don't get it. I am not a product of the Vietnam generation (I am 30) but that is not the primary power of the novel. Rather the power of this text is the truth that it reveals about human nature, dreams, and maturation. People have complained that some of the characters are one dimensional ( I don't see it), boring, unlikable, selfish, etc. Yeah folks, that's the point! Look around you. Do you not know a plethora of people like this in your world? And yet, they are still people, who share with us a common humanity. If anything July,July is too painfully real, precisely because at times it is so unpleasant. All of the characters are flawed, as are all of us, and yet most of us can find in this text some sentiment that expresses some desire of our own. As I finished this text I thought of that great line from Orwell's 1984 where he writes that (paraphrase) "great books tell us what we already know". O'Brien accomplishes just that in this text. That is why it resonates long after the last page. Because at some point in the novel he has articulated a feeling, thought, desire, etc that we the readers have felt in our own lives.
The ending of this novel is especially powerful as, in a very cinematic style, it shows how in all groups of friends some lose in this game of life. Some give up, some die, some try to rectify mistakes, some try again, and some remain ignorantly oblivious. My chest tightened with the immediate recognition of reality as I swept thought the novel's final chapter. I know that when I reread this book later in my life there will be something more for me to reflect upon, something different to see in its truth, and that is why this novel is a remarkable read. I cannot recommend it enough.

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O'Brien Never Disappoints

The first O'Brien novel I ever read was The Things They Carried...it was college...I was impressionable...and it slayed me. Since then, he's become one of those authors I know will not disappoint. All of O'Brien's novels tell the story of a generation emboldened by idealism and ravaged by war. His characters are neither heroes nor villains but, like all of us, a little of both.

July, July tells the tragic story of what happened to those who protested, those who were all about free love, those who went to war, those who came home, and those who ignored the generation that raised them. Thirty years later, college friends attend a reunion and reflect on their choices, their individual pasts, and the impact that their collective youth has had on their collective present.

It's a remarkable, poignant, devastatingly real book about real people. Like all of O'Brien's books, it doesn't pretend to know the answers--and it leaves you with a slight sense of unease at its close. But maybe that's just the way we all feel as we look back.

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Great Entertaining Read

This was my first Tim O'Brien novel. I agree with the other reviews that have characterized this more as a series of interrelated short stories. For some reason these characters and O'Brien's style reminds me of Raymond Carver. I found the beginning of the book challenging because the reader is quickly introduced to so many characters. The strength of the book lies in how O'Brien introduces the characters and their interwoven stories throughout the remainder of the book. My one criticism is the book's premise that so many of these central characters would be so consumed with events that occurred 30 years ago. I struggled to accept that none of them had moved on. But this problem didn't take away from the great writing.

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As he did with In the Lake of the Woods, National Book Award winner Tim O'Brien strikes at the emotional nerve center of our lives with this ambitious, compassionate, and terrifically compelling new novel that tells the remarkable story of the generation molded and defined by the 1960s. At the thirtieth anniversary of Minnesota's Darton Hall College class of 1969, ten old friends reassemble for a July weekend of dancing, drinking, flirting, reminiscing, and regretting. The three decades since their graduation have seen marriage and divorce, children and careers, dreams deferred and disappointed-many memories and many ghosts. Together their individual stories create a portrait of a generation launched into adulthood at the moment when their country, too, lost its innocence. Imbued with his signature themes of passion, memory, and yearning, July, July is Tim O'Brien's most fully realized work.

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