read: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain bear-hugged me nightly as I read. This is a fictional novel about the reality many returning veterans experience. Billy Lynn is a 19 year old hero just back from Iraq where he witnessed his best friend's violent death. And where he killed people. And it was all caught on film and broadcast by CNN.

The entire novel takes place over about four hours at a Dallas Cowboys football game on Thanksgiving. We live inside Billy's head for the duration of the novel, where he struggles to keep some of his more horrible memories at bay, and struggles with people's reaction to himself and his brothers in arms also attending the game. His inner struggle, so eloquently penned, pulled at my own mind and misgivings about my country's involvement in war over the past decade plus. Our involvement in this war is as long as the life of my oldest child who has grown up to only understand our country in the context of war and struggle.

Filled with lyrical, biting language. It turns the lens on the American people through the eyes of Billy Lynn. We look ridiculous, misguided, ignorant, pitifully misinformed or willfully uninformed. I loved this book. I think everyone should read it. I'd go as far to say that I think it's an important book for our times.