Going After Cacciato: A Novel

The Viet Nam war was at its worst as this story takes place in 1968. American men are being killed in vast numbers. With many of the men in Cacciato's unit, wounded or killed and with the monsoon season causing havoc on the men's health, Cacciato decides that he's had enough and walks away from his unit, planning to walk to Paris. There are symbols of hope and death, faith and despair, war and peace, as we follow Cacciato's path. He has maps and will travel through Laos, into Burma and India and other countries on his journey. The first sign that this story is and allegory is when the men in Cacciato's unit are ordered after him and are able to follow his path because he leaves M&M candies along the path. Rich in symbolism, we read of the picture of Christ inside a dead soldier's helmet and the damaged Buddah in the lieutenant's pagoda. The story is narrated by Paul Berlin who has just been assigned to the unit. The story moves from actual scenes of men getting killed, Viet Nam villages being burned and we see the horrors of war. Then we go to the tale of following Cacciato which at times becomes absurd. At one point, the unit has been traveling with a young Viet Namese girl when they all fall into enemy tunnels. They can't find a way out and the girl tells them, she knows, if we got here by falling in, all we have to do is fall out. With no true indication of the separation between what is real and what is in Berlin's imagination, the story became confusing to this reader.

I read the book after reading a review or two so I already knew the concept and it made the book easier to read. Knowing what the author was trying to portray, it was much easier to follow and to understand where the story was going. This was an imaginative story and I thought well done.

This book kept me locked in until I finished it........great writer........off to get another by Tim OBrien right now. LINDSEY......read an online summary it help me out quite a bit