Nico Walker

Not a bad book, not what I expected. I picked this up after seeing a preview for the movie and I can already see how many liberties they took with making the movie. The short chapters and writing style made for a quick read that didn’t loose my attention. It just felt like one of those books that don’t really have a clear cut point. In the authors’ acknowledgements at the end of the book he explains that the main character was changed to be an asshole that you kind of liked...he succeeded lol… (meer)

Cherry is sort of Jarhead meets Trainspotting by way of Joe Swanberg. Our nameless narrator is aimless and restless. As Walker admits in the acknowledgments his narrator is an asshole, but you kind of end up liking him by the end. After dropping out of college, the narrator joins the army because, well, it's not like he had anything better to do. In Iraq, he sees death and chaos. He huffs computer duster with his squad mates and watches porn. He gets high on care packages of pot brownies. He comes home and quickly finds himself crippled by PTSD and addicted to heroin and oxycontin. He'd probably be okay if he wasn't dating a fellow addict, Emily. He starts robbing banks to finance their drug habit. This is all in the jacket copy, and if it sounds like a tough hang that's because it is. However, Walker's style is so rapid and matter-of-fact that you don't ever have time to process the darkness of what you've just read until you've set the book down. Events and chapters flow together one after the other. Conflicts and actions in one vignette rarely have resolutions or consequences in another. It makes for a read that's as bleak as it is addicting.… (meer)