This satire of life in a fortified army base on the outskirts of Baghdad during the US occupation of Iraq is based on the author's experiences as a public relations writer during the war. The "hero" of the novel is Chance Gooding, public affairs staff, who churns out press releases every day about theater of war activity as part of the Army's campaign to win the PR battle. He knows that his efforts are invariably useless, as by the time the Army's version of a "sig act" makes it way through the chain of command for approval they've been scooped by CNN and the NY Times, and that press release is stale news.

Gooding is essentially the only example of a central character in the novel who is an intelligent, sane person just trying to survive the insaneness. Everyone else is varying degrees of incompetent, however much rank they've attained, whether it's Gooding's fat slob of a commanding officer who trembles and gets nosebleeds in front of his own commanders, or the infantry Captain busted down to towel boy for cowardice and rank stupidity, or the Colonel who spends the novel alternating between paralyzing headaches and dreaming of "his wife's milky tit".

The novel is entertaining, though probably a bit over-hyped. ( )

It tried to be Catch-22, but wasn't good enough. Halfway thru I lost interest; and 100% of the way thru I was annoyed by the names of the characters. It was distracting from the story and not fun at all.
Nice try, but better luck next time. ( )

Compared to Slaughterhouse Five and Catch 22 - not a classic such as these. Some memorable characters, though, especially Shrinkle. ( )

This was decent but not great. I really like the idea of fiction set in unusual environments (deployed military in Iraq/Afghanistan being a particularly unusual environment —completely routine and well understood to about 1% of the public while being rather alien to most and only slightly known to some), and I love catch-22, but sadly this book is no catch-22. The characters and setting were decent enough, but the core plot just wasn’t very interesting or entertaining. The author would probably be better writing a series of fictionalized short stories of actual events, or coming up with a more interesting story in the same setting. However, as one of the few comedic novels set in Iraq, it still is probably worth a read. ( )

"Fobbit" is a tale about the life and service of SSG Chance Gooding, a soldier in the Public Affairs Office of a division in Iraq c 2006. As books go, it definitely wants to be Catch-22, I'll say that. Overall, I thought it was underwhelming. While claiming to be a satire, overall, I felt it to be so heavy-handed in its dealings of characters that it came across more as a farce.

-Goods: Abrams can write. It's a quick read, and the writing doesn't bog down. There are some funny bits in it (my favorite was the description of Fledger). He does some nice work describing both life on a large base in a warzone and some of the bizarreness involved in a modern military staff.

-Bads: Gets some details (especially concerning commissioning sources) badly wrong. Of the five main characters, only one has any real kind of arc, two of them are thinly-drawn caricatures, and one just seem to exist to support/drive actions for another one. There's a bunch of other people who seem like really interesting characters, but get no more than a page worth of description. There should have been way more detail on the sausage-making that is creating briefings and SIGACTs and sending them up the chain of command The tone of the book is all over the place; is it supposed to be funny? Revealing? Maybe it would have been in 2006, but by the time it got released, I don't think it was (or at least, it shouldn't have been). The plot doesn't exist very much, and none of the characters give you much reason to care about their plight, safety, or existence. Overall, it felt like the book became what Abrams **thought** people wanted to see about the Iraqi War vice what he experienced or found particularly revealing/insightful.

Caveat: I have been a Fobbit myself in Afghanistan, vice Iraq, so on some level, my frustration may be what I think would be the really awful things that deserve to be lampooned and satired vice what Abrams wrote about. ( )