The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

O'Brien has written extensively about his experiences in Vietnam. This book is classified as fiction although he plays with the reader as he points us toward truth as fiction and vice versa. It is war as ugly as one can imagine. It went a long way to reinforce my belief that it is impossible to return from a war unchanged even if you manage to return undamaged. Particularly moving was the section when he tries to escape to Canada to avoid the draft and then concludes he would be too embarrassed to run. As he says, "I was a coward. I went to the war."