This electrifying novel is set during the first decade of the twenty-first century in small-town America and occupied Iraq. It begins as an account of the emptiness and aimlessness of the lives of young Americans, with lots of casual sex and drug-taking, and then moves to the Middle East after the narrator joins the army. At the end he returns to the States and resumes life with his girlfriend. As he sinks deeper into heroin addiction he takes up bank robbery as a means of funding an addict’s lifestyle. The novel begins with him on the brink of being caught by the cops and the rest of the book is a flashback to how he reached this low point in his life.
Cherry is basically a brilliantly accomplished work of neo-realism, which supplies a very plausible account of how a lot of young Americans at the lower end of the social scale live their lives. It’s also probably the greatest war novel to come out of American writing since that generation of writers who served in the Second World War and published fiction like The Young Lions and The Naked and the Dead.
The prose is stripped-down and laconic. It creates a world which is simultaneously both bleak and comic (one chapter begins: “There was nothing better than to be young and on heroin.”) This novel is not for readers who like elegant polished writing, plots as perfect as a jigsaw, and affluent characters whose appearance, clothes and homes are described in exquisite detail. Nico Walker’s characters have no inner lives, apart from the narrator. They have crappy jobs and eat junk food. They exist largely as names and dialogue. There is an emotional blankness as one thing follows another: more sex, more drugs.
The central section of the novel, set in Iraq, is remarkable. It shows the reality of the American occupation. Bored troops pass the time taking drugs or watching porn or torturing mice. One female soldier sells herself for dollars. The troops look forward to killing Iraqis. Some hustle for a medal they don’t deserve. One thing happens after another but nothing adds up to anything. People quarrel. People lose limbs or die. A soldier called North, disappointed that he’s missed the chance to kill anyone, fires his weapon across a river into an island overgrown with date palms: “That was just North acting out.” It’s a futile gesture which calls to mind the ship firing blindly at the African coast in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Another scene involving cheerleaders visiting the troops is reminiscent of a scene in the movie Apocalypse Now.
The prose is stripped-down and laconic. The novel name-checks two writers - J.D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut - who were plainly inspirational for the deadpan, emotionally distanced voice of the narrator, and for the whimsy and irony that nudges the surface of the action. If you like your comedy very bleak and very dark than you’ll enjoy this book, which is often painfully funny. I found it far more compelling than almost everything which passes for literary fiction nowadays. But if your idea of a good novel is something by Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwan or Kazuo Ishiguro, then Cherry probably isn’t for you. It is not a comfortable read or one which offers relaxing beautifully written entertainment and a gripping, page-turning plot. Cherry is a picaresque tale of daily survival involving lives which don’t seem to be going anywhere. It is also probably the first genuinely classic novel to come out of the twenty-first century United States of America
Descarga la app de Kindle gratuita y comienza a leer libros para Kindle al instante en tu smartphone, tablet u ordenador. No necesitas un dispositivo Kindle. Más información
Lee al instante en tu navegador con Kindle para Web.
Con la cámara de tu teléfono móvil, escanea el siguiente código y descarga la app de Kindle.
![Cherry: Now a Major Film Starring Tom Holland (English Edition) de [Nico Walker]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/W/IMAGERENDERING_521856-T1/images/I/51ztJ5EoyLL._SY346_.jpg)
Sigue al autor
Se ha producido un error. Prueba a realizar la solicitud de nuevo.
Los clientes que compraron este producto también compraron
Página 1 de 1 Volver al inicioPágina 1 de 1
Acerca del autor
Sigue a autores para recibir actualizaciones de nuevas publicaciones, además de recomendaciones mejoradas.
