Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2012) by Ben Fountain. This book has been called "The Catch-22 of the Iraq War," and that's not a bad summation. Billy Lynn is a 19-year-old Army grunt who happened to be caught on film performing some "heroic" actions, and the Bush administration is sending him and his fellow Bravo Company soldiers on a publicity tour of the United States. It climaxes at a Dallas Cowboys football game on Thanksgiving day, and negotiations to make a movie about the Al-Ansakar Canal, where the firefight took place, are under way. The surreal nature of the festivities, given that the Bravos will be going back to Iraq in two days, borders on the insane. I found the book to be compulsively readable and I was only disappointed when it ended. Grade: A-