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Told without a trace of false bravado and with a keen, Barry Hannah–like 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.
The eleven stories in Will Mackin's 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 compassion - of 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 team's 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 "Baker's Strong Point," a man whose job it is to pull things together struggles with a loss of control.
"Starred Review. [S]pellbinding, adrenaline-fueled...in the whole unforgettable collection, the men fighting this war know better than anyone how tragic each loss is." - Publishers Weekly
"A well-plotted group of small fictions for readers wishing a feel for the reality of recent U.S. ground wars." - Library Journal
"A near-miraculous, brilliant debut." - George Saunders, Man Booker Prize–winning 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 Award–winning author of Redeployment
"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 I've ever read." - Karl Marlantes, New York Times bestselling author of Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War
This information about Bring Out the Dog was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Will Mackin, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, served in Iraq and Afghanistan. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, and Tin House, and has been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories 2014. Originally from New Jersey, he now lives in New Mexico with his wife and two children.
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