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Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

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Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

By: Ben Fountain
Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
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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.

©2012 Ben Fountain Contemporary Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction Sports
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Critic Reviews

"This book will be the Catch-22 of the Iraq War. Instead of skewering the military, however, it skewers the society responsible for sending it to war, namely us. This funny, yet totally sobering, dissection of the American way of watching war will have you squirming at the same time you are laughing out loud; Fountain applies the heat of his wicked sense of humor while you face the truth of who we have become" (Karl Marlantes)
"Astonishingly brilliant . . . The writing crackles off the page" (BERNARD CORNWELL)
"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)
"My favourite book of the year, a smart, funny, sad tale" (KATE ATKINSON)
"Breathtaking, beautiful, startlingly authentic" (Patrick Hennessey, author of THE JUNIOR OFFICERS’ READING CLUB)
"

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)
"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)
"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 and sold to the American public"
"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"
All stars
Most relevant
Read this one for the characters not for the plot. Plot is minimal it is all about the mindset of the men and the juxtaposition of their day verse the reality of the war.

Good read

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