The Things They Carried– Review

Tim O’Brien weaves a collection of character-driven vignettes related thematically by the Vietnam War yet more powerfully through characters’ sentimental items, emotional baggage, and trauma.  These “things” help create powerful character profiles evolving into stories within themselves, and the connections between stories at first seem rigid and chronological until O’Brien ties suddenly several story threads having the effect of tossing an ice cube down his reader’s shirt.  I read this book several years before attending my first writing conference, several years before I heard about “collections of short stories in novel form” or could appreciate truly the difficulties in creating such a work while maintaining character-driven story lines.  The Things They Carried is an excellent example of this literary fiction genre, one I appreciated even before I could even begin to discuss it in terms of craft.