So, last year in our English class we had to read The Things They Carried and Tim O’Brien has quickly become one of my favorite authors. Maddy and I had a fight when we decided to review it over who would be getting it. Maddy ended up getting it as you saw it was her review a few weeks ago and I got Going After Cacciato. Which honestly wasn’t bad. I love that I got a chance to read it and I’ve grown to love O’Brien’s writing so it was a joy to read.
Going After Cacciato is about a troop during the Vietnam war much like The Things They Carried, it’s told from the point of view of a young soldier named Paul Berlin. Paul Berlin and a group of soldiers are following Cacciato, a soldier that’s on the run and is planning to walk to Paris and they follow him to make sure he doesn’t get too far. The book takes several twists and tells of the adventures that they had on trying to catch Cacciato. It switches between scenes often and it goes from telling of their adventures to Berlin’s guarding at an observation tower, but not many details are known about it. At the end of the book, when they’ve finally tracked Cacciato down to a hotel room in Paris and Berlin has stormed in and fired bullets into the room, the scene shifts again. Berlin is back at the observation post and we learn that Cacciato did try to desert the army, but when their lieutenant found out and had the soldiers tried to stop him, but Berlin accidently shot and killed Caccito and the lieutenant labeled him missing in action out of sympathy for Berlin.
My English teacher also recommended this book because she loves Tim O’Brien, so I ended up reading it and I honestly really enjoyed it. O’Brien has such a great style of writing that I haven’t really read before and he just has a way of keeping the reader interested from the beginning. In some books I’ve read, it feels like a chore to actually read them but for O’Brien’s books I’m always hooked at the beginning and excited to read them.
I would definitely recommend this book! I think that if you’ve ever read any books by O’Brien before or if you’re even interested in reading his books that you should give this one a chance, it’s a great read and it was quick for me since I was so into it.
Happy Reading!
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