One of the books getting the most buzz at the Winter Institute last week (basically camp for booksellers) was Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, a novel about Vietnam. Morgan Entrekin, founder of Grove Atlantic, loved it so much that he struck a deal with Marlantes’ current publisher to put out a more widely distributed edition.
I finished Matterhorn last night. Vietnam was fucked up. I doubt any movie or book can really make me understand quite what it was like to fight on the front lines of Vietnam. This book got me one step closer. It’s gritty, dirty, perhaps overwritten in a few places, but overall a scary claustrophobic book on a nasty war.
Bookdwarf 
I just finished reading Matterhorn too. Definitely a nasty look inside Vietnam. Hard to read at times, but definitely powerfully written.
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All I kept thinking was “could there be a worse place to be?” The time, the location, the purpose, all of it…
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Finished Matterhorn a few hours ago. Have collected and read all the well-written books abou the vietnam war. The battle scenes are well-written and about as accurate as a writer could get. Readers should understand that reading about combat is like reading about sex. There is no substitute for the real thing. The books is weak when the fragging scene is written. No way any officer would respond the way the main character did. Or at least I didn’t find it believable.
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I was there. ’67-’68
Shot up so bad in the Central Highlands no one thought I would come through. I did…!
Just finished Matterhorn and I am impressed beyond belief….
The prose is elegant and very real and definitely.
Though flawed as the last writer has noted, The book will be an instant classic!
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