Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk - Softcover

Ben Fountain

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0857864408 ISBN 13: 9780857864406

Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd, 2013

Synopsis

Nineteen-year-old Billy Lynn is home from Iraq. And he's a hero. Billy and the rest of Bravo Company were filmed defeating Iraqi insurgents in a ferocious firefight. Now Bravo's three minutes of extreme bravery is a YouTube sensation and the Bush Administration has sent them on a nationwide Victory Tour. During the final hours of the tour Billy will mix with the rich and powerful, endure the politics and praise of his fellow Americans - and fall in love. He'll face hard truths about life and death, family and friendship, honour and duty. Tomorrow he must go back to war.

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

Book Description:

Now a major motion picture directed by Oscar-winning director Ang Lee

About this edition

• Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0857864408
• ISBN 13: 9780857864406
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320