Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk - Hardcover

Ben Fountain

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857864386 ISBN 13: 9780857864383

Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd, 2012

Synopsis

Nineteen-year-old Billy Lynn is home from war. Back in Texas, he has become a national celebrity. A Fox News crew filmed Billy and the rest of Bravo squad defeating Iraqi insurgents in a ferocious firefight. Now Billy is a decorated soldier and Bravo's three minutes of extreme bravery under fire are a YouTube sensation. Seizing on this PR gift, The Bush administration has sent the surviving members of Bravo on a nationwide 'Victory Tour' to reassure the homeland. Today, during the final hours of the tour, they arrive at Texas Stadium, guests of honour in a nationally broadcast Thanksgiving Day game. The story follows Billy and his fellow Bravos through a climactic afternoon, as they mix with the rich and powerful, endure the politics and affections of their fellow citizens, aspire to sex and marriage with the famous Cowboys cheerleaders, share centre stage with Destiny's Child and attempt to close a movie deal. They will learn hard truths about love and death, family and friendship, duty and honour. Tomorrow, they must go back to war. Tender and full of humanity, this is a wickedly funny, powerfully contemporary novel about a young man, the citizens who sent him to war, the family he left behind and the era that let it happen. In Billy Lynn, Ben Fountain has created a new American hero for our times.

About this title

Review:

'Brilliant: funny, involving, warm-hearted, a book for our times' Rachel Cook Observer

'A fierce, exhilarating novel about the Iraq war ... And it is terrific: eloquent and angry, funny and poignant' Theo Tait Guardian

'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is not merely good; it's Pulitzer Prize-quality good ... A bracing, fearless and uproarious satire of how contemporary war is waged' San Francisco Chronicle

'Breathtaking, beautiful, startlingly authentic' Patrick Hennessey, Author Of The Junior Officers' Reading Club

'This book will be the Catch-22 of the Iraq War ... Fountain applies the heat of his wicked sense of humor while you face the truth of who we have become' Karl Marlantes

'As close to the Great American Novel as anyone is likely to come these days - an extraordinary work that captures and releases the unquiet spirit of our age, and will probably be remembered as one of the important books of this decade' Madison Smartt Bell

'Passionate, irreverent, utterly relevant, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk offers an unforgettable portrait of a reluctant hero. Ben Fountain writes like a man inspired and his razor sharp exploration of our contemporary ironies will break your heart' Margot Livesey

'Too often nowadays even rather good novels fail to excite me - I suppose over the years I've read too many of them - which means that those which do are Events in my life. And now I can add Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk to the list. A blazingly good novel and a vital, important book about war and the world we live in' Diana Athill

'Ben Fountain's novel is an exhilarating, funny, heartbreaking glimpse into the life of a young soldier and into experiences in which we are complicit - but about which we understand nothing. And it finds its mark in an incredibly personal way. The book has left me reeling' Colin Firth

'It is a masterpiece of war literature, which is always to say, of anti-war literature' Australian Review

'Brilliantly done ... grand, intimate, and joyous' Geoff Dyer

'[An] inspired, blistering war novel...Though it covers only a few hours, the book is a gripping, eloquent provocation. Class, privilege, power, politics, sex, commerce and the life-or-death dynamics of battle all figure in Billy Lynn's surreal game day experience' New York Times

'A masterful echo of Catch-22, with war in Iraq at the center ... a masterful gut-punch of a debut novel ... There's hardly a false note, or even a slightly off-pitch one, in Fountain's sympathetic, damning and structurally ambitious novel. By the novel's end, we're forced to reassess what it means to 'support the troops'. Does it simply mean letting them know they're in our prayers as we send them back into battle and go about our business? Does it mean turning them into gaudy celebrities? Or could there perhaps be a more honorable and appropriately humble way to commemorate their service? Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk asks us to consider the uncomfortable possibility that we don't really know the answer anymore' Washington Post

'Fountain's excellent first novel follows a group of soldiers at a Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving Day...Through the eyes of the titular soldier, Fountain creates a minutely observed portrait of a society with woefully misplaced priorities. A pitch-perfect ear for American talk drives the satire' New Yorker

'Seething, brutally funny...[Fountain] leaves readers with a fully realized band of brothers...Fountain's readers will never look at an NFL Sunday, or at America, in quite the same way' Sports Illustrated

'[T]he shell-shocked humor will likely conjure comparisons with Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five...War is hell in this novel of inspired absurdity' Kirkus Review

'I love this' --Nick Hornby

'Ben Fountain stormed to the front lines of American fiction when he published his astonishing first collection of short stories, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara. His first novel will raise his stature and add to his splendid reputation. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is both hilarious and heartbreaking' -- Pat Conroy

'It seems like Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk should fall apart in several different ways and descend to the ranks of gimmicky first novels. Books aren't set over the course of a single day because that's generally not enough time to establish characters and provide enough drama and emotional resonance. But Fountain pulls it off by combining blistering, beautiful language with razor-sharp insight...Ben Fountain has written a funny novel that provides skewering critiques of America's obsession with sports, spectacle, and war' --Huffington Post

Book Description:

'This book will be the Catch-22 of the Iraq War' Karl Marlantes

About this edition

• Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0857864386
• ISBN 13: 9780857864383
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 309