Debut novelist Young deftly maneuvers between Dean's postdischarge life and the corrosive and brutalizing events of his military service and clearly conveys the jarring realities of transitioning from wartime to lifetime . . . humor and perceptive insights mark the storytelling; people he meets want to hear about his war experiences, but what they really want to do is to tell him about their own, or secondhand, war stories. Young . . . delivers a cleareyed, nonsentimental chronicle of the corrosive and far-reaching effects of war and its inevitable aftermath . . . War is hell, but Young shows us that what happens afterward can be worse.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Artful and piercing . . . an essential addition to the literature of war.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Young throws readers into Dean's wars with the same tough love as his outstanding memoir, Eat the Apple (2018), writing in rhythmic military shorthand to hypnotizing effect. Dean insists that he's telling us a love story, and in Young's utterly contemporary war novel, he's right, several times over.” —Booklist
“Young's writing style is staccato, clipped, propulsive . . . the story of a young vet desperate to shed the habits of mind and body that were drilled into him . . . [End of Active Service] reinforces the personal consequences of war and violence: the heavy physical and psychological weight and the habits of mind that are so obdurate and hard to interrupt. Young creates and sustains an unbearable tension.” —California Review of Books
“Matt Young brilliantly captures the peculiar mixture of pride and sorrow that comes with fighting in our modern wars, and the difficult work of reintegration into civilian life. But more than simply a war story, End of Active Service is a powerful and deeply affecting portrait of the challenges of life and fatherhood, with characters you come to care for deeply.” —Phil Klay, National Book Award winning author of Redeployment
“Young writes with howling musicality, bounding between Iraq and Indiana with the dexterity of a pro and the mania of truth. The effect is irresistible, hilarious, and poignant when least expected. At once a raw portrait of trauma and a takedown of macho brouhaha, End of Active Service delivers shock and awe on every page.” —Jakob Guanzon, National Book Award longlisted author of Abundance
“Warning: this is not a war story. It's the story after the war, the story of rebuilding, painful and raw, brutal in its bald honesty, beautiful too, and startlingly funny. So intimate you'll feel it in your body like a gut-punch, with a voice both taunting and tender. As we're told in the novel's incredible opening, this is a love story, though you won't find it all that familiar. A brilliant, necessary debut novel that surprised me again and again. I didn't want it to end.” —Katie Flynn, author of Island Rule
“A blistering account of America's forever-war with itself. End of Active Service begins where our mythology leaves off, and in remarkable, machine-gun-fire prose reveals the deep wounds we all carry. An important book for our time.” —Maxim Loskutoff, author of Ruthie Fear and Come West and See
“Life after war is just another kind of war for the narrator of Matt Young's extraordinary, compelling, and brutally insightful debut novel, End of Service. Written in spare, poetic prose, Young's unflinching immersion in the life of his traumatized protagonist makes the war novel new again.” —Laura Sims, author of How Can I Help You
“Young is a frank, funny and mercilessly self-lacerating narrator. His writing is entertaining and experimental . . . Eat the Apple is a brilliant and barbed memoir of the Iraq War.” —Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air on EAT THE APPLE
“Raw, disturbing, hilarious, and unsparing book . . . a brutally honest account of what it's like to be a Marine and fight in a war.” —Vox on EAT THE APPLE
“Perfectly captures that dichotomy of the American military - to protect individual freedoms, we must destroy our own individual freedoms - in beautiful, hilarious, horrifying prose.” —The Seattle Review of Books on EAT THE APPLE
★ 2024-05-17
“Really, though, when you get down to it, most everything is a war story, right?”
Dean Pusey is having a tough time adjusting to life back in Indiana after having served four years as a Marine in Iraq. He’s living with his (adoptive) mother and stepfather, working at UPS, and hanging out with his childhood best friend. None of it, however, is going well, and Dean is still at war—if only with himself and PTSD. Floundering on his way to becoming “someone” rather than “anyone,” Dean struggles to discern whether he is the problem in all his relationships, including the one he never had with his birth mother. Unfortunately, the discernment process involves a lot of alcohol, some drugs, bar fights, a rifle, and pretend battle exercises. Flashbacks to brutal episodes Dean witnessed and participated in during his tours of duty come fast and furious, but Dean is not ready, willing, or able to reveal what he’s still carrying around in his head. Debut novelist Young deftly maneuvers between Dean’s postdischarge life and the corrosive and brutalizing events of his military service and clearly conveys the jarring realities of transitioning from wartime to lifetime. As Dean narrates the course of what he promises will be a love story—while opining that war stories underpin almost every experience—humor and perceptive insights mark the storytelling; people he meets want to hear about his war experiences, but what they really want to do is to tell him about their own, or secondhand, war stories. Young, the author of Eat the Apple (2018), a memoir detailing his own service with the Marines in Iraq, delivers a cleareyed, nonsentimental chronicle of the corrosive and far-reaching effects of war and its inevitable aftermath.
War is hell, but Young shows us that what happens afterward can be worse.
