This book is a bit hard to pin down. Is it a novel, a collection of short stories, a memoir – or a unique hybrid of all three? Whatever it is, it should be considered the ultimate war story, and as the narrator (whose name is also Tim O’Brien) points out, war stories are never true and yet are always completely true.

While the entire book is compelling, its structure naturally leads to some sections standing out. There is the story of a soldier who ships his girlfriend out to Vietnam, and she goes native, becoming a part of the war and the country in a way her American sweetheart never could – that was one that stuck with me. And then there was the loosely connected set of stories detailing what happened in a shitfield one night, and who exactly was to blame. Or the story of what happened before the narrator was sent to Vietnam, when he considered running away to Canada and called himself a coward for not following through.

No matter which story stays with you the most, you can’t help but admire the entire construction of the work for the precisely detailed way it evokes the war and the experiences of the poor fools who had to live (or die) through it. Anyone who is familiar with O’Brien’s work will surely know how his war experiences have touched everything he has written; this is his ultimate retelling of that time in his life, and probably one of the best chronicles of the Vietnam era.

The Things They Carried is the 2007 selection for the Eden Prairie Reads initiative (epreads.org). I was a little hesitant at first, unsure of how well I’d enjoy a collection of Vietnam War stories. The book is less about gunfire and battles won or lost, and more of a peek inside the head of the men involved – doubt, terror, obsession, camaraderie, death, survival instinct, the psychological turmoil of going home, and ultimately, for some, closure.

Although considered a work of fiction, one gets the feeling that all of the stories have some basis in reality. In fact, several times the author refers to himself as being present in the stories. As a reader, I felt some frustration in not being able to determine what was true.