Weapons and good-luck charms carried by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam here represent survival, lost innocence and the war's interminable legacy. "O'Brien's meditations--on war and memory, on darkness and light--suffuse the entire work with a kind of poetic form, making for a highly original, fully realized novel," P.W.

*Note: Portions of some descriptions, and in some cases, entire descriptions taken from Amazon.com and / or ReadingGroupGuides.com and Globalliteracyproject.com

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