Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

by Ben Fountain

Paperback, 2012

Status

Available

Call number

813.6

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collections

Top Recommendations, Recommended Books

Publication

Ecco (2012), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 320 pages

Description

A satire set in Texas during America's war in Iraq that explores the gaping national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad. Follows the surviving members of the heroic Bravo Squad through one exhausting stop in their media-intensive "Victory Tour" at Texas Stadium, football mecca of the Dallas Cowboys, their fans, promoters, and cheerleaders.

Media reviews

NPR

Every two or three years, if I'm lucky, I get my hands on a novel that I simply can't shut up about, a novel I shout from my humble mountaintop to anyone who will listen, a novel that I hand-sell any time I have a literate audience of one or more. In many cases, I'll purchase this novel, over and

over and over, and put it in the hands of readers....One novel this year blew the top of my head off like no other, and that was Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain.... No brow-beating, no navel gazing and no ranting. Just great storytelling, fully realized characters and sentences that crackle. In short, Fountain makes it look easy.

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The Guardian

The novel is niftily postmodern, in that it deals with a heavily mediated reality. Bravo squad aren't even called Bravo squad, but that was what the "Fox embed" christened them. They hear their story being spun in real time: "Carl, what can I say?" says Albert, the movie producer, on the phone.

"It's a war picture – not everybody gets out alive." The stadium is dominated by the huge "Jumbotron" screen; Billy wonders whether "maybe the game is just an ad for the ads". But Fountain, like better-known writers of his generation such as Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace, has dragged this ironic, media-saturated style back in the direction of sincerity, with rich, sharply drawn characters that you care about. Beneath the dazzle, there's a story as old and simple as Kipling's poem "Tommy": "They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls, / But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!"

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NPR

The irony, sorrow, anger and examples of cognitive dissonance that suffuse this novel make it one of the most moving and remarkable novels I've ever read.

Washington Post

There’s hardly a false note, or even a slightly off-pitch one, in Fountain’s sympathetic, damning and structurally ambitious novel. (The whole story, with the exception of a flashback or two, takes place during the course of a single afternoon.) Billy and the other Bravos are, for the most

part, uneducated, but they possess a rare intelligence that allows them to see things as they really are, which is not exactly the way the pro-war meme generators want Americans to see them. By the novel’s end, we’re forced to reassess what it means to “support the troops.” Does it simply mean letting them know they’re in our prayers as we send them back into battle and go about our business? Does it mean turning them into gaudy celebrities? Or could there perhaps be a more honorable and appropriately humble way to commemorate their service? “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” asks us to consider the uncomfortable possibility that we don’t really know the answer anymore.

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User reviews

LibraryThing member brenzi

What does it mean to ‘support the troops?’ Are we Americans simply talking about praying for our boys (and girls) or boxing up toothbrushes, chewing gum and cell phones and mailing them off? Is that the kind of support our troops need, or want? This theme is explored in a fascinating manner in

Ben Fountain’s newly crowned National Book Critics Circle fiction winner.

Billy Lynn and his surviving teammates in the Bravo squad are home from Iraq for a heroes’tour after an embedded Fox news team filmed a fire fight they were involved in and made them household names here in the U.S. The story takes place, for the most part, on Thanksgiving Day at a Dallas Cowboys’ football game, which is the squad’s last appearance before they return to Iraq and the war they left behind for a few blissful days. They have been exposed across the country to adoring fans and are accompanied by a Hollywood bigwig who is trying to get enough backers to produce a movie about their experience. Most of their new found fans in the U.S. are appalled at the idea that they have to return to Iraq to fulfill their obligation. As much as it frightens them, the boys take it in their stride. It never dawned on them because why wouldn’t they return? But Billy does have a reason not to go back or at least a reason to return home safely---he has somehow, miraculously, unbelievably, attracted the attention and exchanged phone numbers with one of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. Can this fandom get any better? But Billy realizes that things are not quite right with this whole heroes’ tour thing.

Fountain operates as a kind of mirror for us as we make our way through this very fine satire with understated prose and funny bits. As guests of the loud mouth, arrogant owner of the Cowboys, the squad endures absurdities that are hard to explain except to say it’s the American way: a meagerly dressed Beyonce and Destiny’s Child entertaining the fans at halftime as the Bravo squad goes through the awkward motions of a military maneuver, the bombastic millionaires and their fawning wives touting insipid clichés and as the men of Bravo are asked to describe their hellish war experience, Billy stares out at the cheerleader’s pom-poms, shaking in the rain. And when the fireworks explode at the end of the halftime show Fountain puts it this way:

”On Billy’s other side Crack is looking clammy and grim. If there was ever a prime-time trigger for PTSD you couldn’t do much better than this, but lucky for Norm (Cowboys owner), the crowd, America, the forty-million-plus TV viewing audience, Bravos can deal, oh yes! Pupils dilated, pulse and blood pressure through the roof, limbs trembling with stress-reflex cortisol rush, but it’s cool, it’s good, their shit’s down tight, no Vietnam-vet crackups for Bravo squad! You can march these boys straight into sound-and-light-show hell and Bravos can deal, but, damn, isn’t it rude to put them through it?” (Page 230)

As the movie pay-day seems less and less likely, Billy and the squad get ready to return to Iraq and Ben Fountain brings to a close a story that exposes the war for what it is and the American people don’t come out looking too good. That they have been manipulated by the media and the government goes without saying. That the strings are being pulled by corporate America is not quite as obvious. Highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member GarySeverance

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a novel that will have different meanings to military veterans and non-veterans. Of course, every novel has different meanings to every reader just as Proust wrote in In Search of Lost Time. Once the writer publishes his novel, the great French author stated, the

reader is the sole determiner of its ultimate meaning. The unique characteristic of Ben Fountain's book is the clear distinction between the responses of people who have been in the military during times of war and those who have not.

Billy Lynn is a 19 year old soldier in the Iraq War who was named a hero (Silver Star) after surviving a firefight with Iraqi troops. He and Bravo Squad are rewarded in the middle of their tour of duty with leave, a trip back to the US for the Thanksgiving holiday. During the two weeks at home, the members of the squad get to visit friends and family for a couple of days and tour the US on a "Victory Tour." The half time walk occurs in Dallas when the squad are taken in a stretch limo (instead of a cramped Humvee)to a Cowboy's game.

The action of a single day at the game is told from the point of view of the Silver Star winner, and Billy walks around Cowboy Stadium under the loose but insistent control of his Squad leader, Sergeant Dime. The soldiers are hung over from a night of controlled partying, and they sneak drinks during the game even though strictly limited by Dime. Instead of deteriorating into a drunken comedy, Fountain takes readers on a panoramic view of US culture during the Iraq War. There are military well-wishers, pro football players, cheerleaders, family members, a flamboyant Cowboy's owner, angry roadies, Beyoncé and her entourage, and an unusual woman interested in Billy. All of these characters interact with Billy's squad of survivors of a deadly attack by insurgents in Iraq that lasted only minutes. The writing is subtly ironic without the over-the-top character stereotypes that are found in many novels today.

The most interesting aspect of the novel is the dissociative state of Billy Lynn, the feeling he has that he is no longer a part of US life. He is an observer wondering at the motivation of people who desire Western comforts and excitements. The Army and the firefight have taken much of the emotion he had associated with accomplishment, easy living, national events, beauty, aggression, territoriality, work, sports, and most importantly, love. Even at 19 with limited education Billy has genuine insight and realizes he has a mental separation from his past civilian life. He wonders whether this private mental leave will be permanent and he will have to deliberately make other things matter. This process is true of young people who have served or are currently serving in the military. The service affects everything, much more than the surface appearance and expected behavior of the person. Fountain has captured the fundamental change that Billy has experienced and we veterans and active duty personnel can identify with the lasting dissociative existence of our post war era lives. Non-veterans can understand the sea change of soldiers in the novel and can enjoy the contrast with US citizens living in peace separate from distant wars. The wonderful writing describes soldiers' forced acceptance of permanent solitude and separation from the reinforcements of a comfortable life. Fountain also shows civilians' desperate avoidance of the terror of facing irreversible changes in the structure of their concepts of a stable cultural life.

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LibraryThing member porch_reader

This book has gotten some attention in year-end "Best of" lists, and after reading it, I think that attention is well-deserved. It takes place on a single day, Thanksgiving 2004, at Texas Stadium. The men of Bravo are home from the Iraq War on a Victory Tour after their heroic performance in a fire

fight. This group of young men spends the day trying to negotiate a movie deal, performing in a halftime show with Destiny's Child, and meeting a few Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. But underneath these antics, we learn about the events that made Bravo heroes, and the mixed feelings that they have about their victory tour. In writing about the range of reactions to these soldiers, Fountain captures the distance between many Americans and the Iraq War. Encapsulated in a day is a commentary on a much bigger event. This was a worthwhile read.

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LibraryThing member jnwelch

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain centers around 19-year-old Billy Lynn, who with his Bravo Army squad is on a two week publicity tour of the U.S. in a national celebration of their bravery during a firefight in George W's Iraqi war. In our media age, it was filmed by Fox news and

broadcast repeatedly across the country. Last stop on the tour: a Dallas Cowboys NFL game, at which the squad will be featured at halftime with Beyonce's group Destiny's Child. Then it's back to Iraq for 11 more months. A successful Hollywood producer tags along, trying to close a deal to make a movie of their exploits, in which actress Hilary Swank has "taken an interest".

Billy Lynn has been deeply affected by his tour of duty, losing a close mentor friend to the war, and maturing beyond his years. He stays humble despite the endless foofaraw; he observes, he questions, and through his eyes at Cowboy Stadium we see crassness, ignorance, celebrity lust, materialism, endless sucking up, and naive, ill-informed patriotism. Yet we also see a touching, unlikely romance develop, and Billy Lynn and his superior Dime ably dissect some of the more repugnant machinations around them. His squad members have been mentally and emotionally damaged by the war, and their bond to one another is, in this unlikely setting, realistically conveyed, with rough-edged humor its most important component. We learn about Billy Lynn's trailer park background, how he ended up where he is, and we watch him learning to transcend all of it, to stand on his own two feet and see clearly from the height of his experience.

This is a compulsive read, with characters to root for and villains by the pound. There's a bit of a Catch-22 flavor to it in its biting humor and satire. One of my top reads so far this year.

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LibraryThing member KatieANYC

I'm pretty close to this material, so this can all be taken with a grain of salt. I'll start with the biggest problem I had with this book, which was that it was unrelentingly cynical about strangers interacting with Billy and the Bravo company. To a man, every person who thanks the soldiers or

asks them about their experiences is depicted as tone-deaf, self-congratulatory, self-serving, or unfeeling. Not one time was Billy able to feel actually appreciated by an American offering his/her thanks. This is so counter to my experience of having a deployed family member, that it bothered me quite a bit. In addition, the uber-articulate vocabulary used when the narration is omniscient often slipped into Billy's own head, a jarring and unrealistic effect.

However, Billy is an achingly sympathetic character, full of longing and complexity. If at times he seems far too bewildered by basic American cultural touchstones for a typical 19 year old, this can be forgiven by his genuine desire for connection and understanding. The family is incredibly well-described and their interactions with Billy increasingly heartbreaking. The camaraderie, the constant teasing, the way the soldiers decide how to react to things in large part by watching how each other react...this is all very well done.

This novel has a big, big heart and asks a lot of deeply relevant questions. It would have benefited from pushing a bit harder on its own assumptions.

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LibraryThing member LynnB

It took me a while to get into this book, but I am glad I stuck with it. I'm not American, a football fan or someone who particularly likes books about soldiers and war. But this novel made me think, and I took several messages from it: to those who aren't soldiers and have no soldiers close to

them, war is a "half-time show" they experience from time to time on TV; it is almost impossible for soldiers to talk about war to those who haven't experieced it; what does "supporting our troops" really mean....what kind of support do they want and need?; what is a hero?

Mr. Fountain has done a great job of showing the bond among a squad of soldiers. He writes dialogue particularly well and is able to tell a story that is funny, shocking and disturbing all at the same time. I have a son slightly older than Billy Lynn and I came to understand and care about Billy through the skillful way Mr. Fountain drew him.

Like other reviewers, I found the book unrelentingly cynical and in no way subtle. The same message was conveyed over and over again, perhaps once or twice too often. But on balance, add me to the list of fans.

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LibraryThing member gpaisley

Truly amazing book.

Billy Lynn is a soldier. He is one of eight soldiers of "Bravo Squad," ordinary army grunts in Iraq who one day find themselves in a brief but fierce battle that happens to be captured by their embedded reporter on video. The film of their battle makes them instant "heroes," so

the pentagon decides to pull them out of Iraq and send them on a two weel "Victory Tour" around the US to drum up support for the war. The final appearance of the Tour is a Dallas Cowboys football game on Thanksgiving day. The whole story takes place on this one day, with brief flashbacks to a few scenes in the previous weeks.

Fountain packs so much emotion and thought into every scene that I was often exhausted from reading, but in a good way. He manages to get you to think, but without being preachy. He is ironic, but without the smugness that often marks modern American irony.

It's emotional without being maudlin, political without being partisan or polemic.

This story isn't for everyone, but those who read it will be glad they did.

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LibraryThing member tututhefirst

This finalist on the 2012 National Book Award list was not at all what I thought it was going to be. I'm not sure what I expected. I think I was expecting yet another "shoot 'em up" war book. So this was a (dare I say?) delightful surprise. Billy Lynn is a member of Bravo company, a group

of young soldiers currently on a "victory tour" around the United States to celebrate their now famous actions in a fire-fight in the war in the Middle East. Their unit just happened to have a FOX news reporter embedded and his footage and report of the battle made instant heroes of this band of brothers --so says the publisher's cover flap blurb.

A story of growing up, not a war story, but a novel of exquisite sensitivity about how heroism and patriotism can be very different entities when viewed through the lens of the hero and patriot as opposed to the eyes of the grateful nation's stay at home, football fanatic, rock star worshipping citizens of the good Ole U. S.of A.

We meet Billy and his buddies as their victory tour draws to a close, when they are slated to be part of the half-time show on Thanksgiving Day at the Dallas Cowboy football game. Billy, a Silver-Star recipient for his part in the battle, and a Texas native, has just finished a 2 day visit with his family and is struggling to reconcile his sense of forboding about returning to the war, along with his desire to take his sister's offer to help him run-away with a pacifist group who promise to hide him safely from legal action. He's had a chance to reflect on conversations with his best friend, who died in his arms. He's unimpressed with the Hollywood agent's offer to sell their story for $100K each - especially when the deal never seems to be quite finished. In short, he is fine tuning a healthy cynicism and skepticism about everything happening in his just beginning to form adult world.

At the stadium, the group is introduced to a plethora of Texas big-wigs, a gorgeous born-again cheerleader, and some rather clueless football players. Ben Fountain's incredible writing has kept this group from becoming cardboard stereotypes of both sides of the patriotism coin. Billy and his buddies soon realize they are propoganda pawns, and that no one is really interested in them as individuals, except their Sergeant who tries to keep them together physically and mentally. Billy and his cohorts react to this emotional and philosophical overload by drinking, fighting, and generally acting like the scared but brave heroes they really are.

This is a raw and unvarnished devastating look at an unpopular war. Fountain manages however, to separate the issues of those who fought the war from the issues of war itself. Many have compared this to Catch 22, and M.A.S.H. where the combatants and participants are looking at events through totally different lenses than the planners, plotters, and politicians. The novel is certainly destined to be regarded as a classic, and will be one I'll re-read more than once. It will absolutely be one of my top ten reads of this year, and should be on any list of top books of 2012 (the year it was published.)

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LibraryThing member creighley

Set in Texas during the war in Iraq, this novel explores the huge gap between the war at home and the real one abroad. The focus is on the surviving members of Bravo Squad at one their exhaustive media stops in Dallas during their "VictoryTour." Remarkable.

LibraryThing member csayban

I wanted to enjoy Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. I really expected I would. And halfway through it, I thought I was enjoying it. But by the time I reached the third act, I realized that everything was so one-dimensional. I get that as a first-person, steam-of-consciousness narrative, some

things are going to be unreliable and something things will be omitted. The problem is that too many really interesting and important things are set up, but never actually happen. Chief among those is the battle that made Billy and his squad into internet stars – it is never explained what happened or why it was different. Maybe Fountain’s point is that it doesn’t matter. But it does matter when that was the premise behind all of the events taking place.

Perhaps Billy’s tale is so frustrating because Billy is so one-dimensional himself. The whole point of this sort of book is to live the journey from the eyes of somebody else as events happen that force them to change or evolve. The trouble is that Billy never does change. He simply floats along through a chain of events he seems powerless to alter and uninterested in trying to. And frankly, the ending was so devoid of any hope that it made The Road feel uplifting in comparison.

Maybe Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a critique on how society handles war and its participants. Unfortunately, none of the people or events felt realistic. It was like living in a caricature of how people act that left everything feeling artificial. I can see why many people like it, but the story and the characters simply didn’t feel plausible enough for me to become emotionally attached.

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LibraryThing member SaschaD

It's almost horrible that the first two books I have read in 2016 have been as good as they were; it will seem like every book from here out will be a let down.

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a powerful book about a heroic squad of soldiers who come home to be honored and then they are invited

to the spectacle of a Thanksgiving Cowboys game where the juxtaposition between that world, the one of the commercial, professional football business with all of its free-flowing money and materials, and the soldiers' world, where very little is free-flowing except Iraqi animosity and shrapnel, sears.

Unflinching and very much worth reading.

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LibraryThing member froxgirl

This novel is to the Iraq/Afghanistan generation as Catch 22 was to WW II and Vietnam. Billy Lynn, conscripted by a mean judge into jail or the service at age 19, performs a dramatic rescue during a firefight in Iraq. His Bravo Company, minus the dead, are brought back to the US for a VICTORY TOUR

culminating in a halftime appearance at Dallas Stadium for Thanksgiving. It's so ridiculous, even to the naïve Billy, that all the guys get shitfaced and stoned as quickly as possible. And Billy's on track to lose his virginity to a Dallas cheerleader. And to perform with Beyoncé at halftime. And then to be shipped back to Iraq.

The hypocrisy, expressed in perfect word clouds, is strong in this one. Laughter and tears are very close. This novel is a triumph that I hope will not be ruined by the upcoming film. YOU MUST READ THIS FIRST.

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LibraryThing member Kristelh

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk has been on my kindle shelf since 2012 and I've finally read it. It is our April F2F bookclub read. It wasn't my kind of book. I think I can appreciate what the author was trying to do with the book but I don't think he quite got it done. It just didn't make the it.

This is a story of soldiers who were fighting in Iraq home for a brief stay to tour the US for heroic action and culminates with a day at Texas Stadium to be the halftime show. There is talk of a movie about the heroic action of Bravo. Probably every Bravo man is having some sort of PTSD. Its a story of young man, Billy Lynn, who didn't join the service but was strongly encouraged by a judge to go to war rather than jail. Billy Lynn is young, 19, but a good soldier. He hasn't had a real girlfriend yet, he isn't of age to drink, but he is old enough to fight a war for the people of the US who care more about football and money. The book is an antiwar book, a political statement. The book may lend itself to discussion but I am expecting that few will actually get this book read. Also there was way to much swearing and using God's name profanely.

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LibraryThing member etxgardener

Billy Lynn and the members of Bravo Company are at the end of their "Freedom & Heros" Tour and are about to be redeployed to Iraq. But first they have one last stop - the Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving Day. Spanning the course of one day, this book is a biting satire on the hypocrisy of the

American public who is always thanking service men & women for their service to their country, but are not willing to sacrifice anything themselves and use the platoon for their own personal aggrandizement.

This is a darkly satiric novel that deserved to be on the short list for the National Book Award in 2013

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LibraryThing member naphta0853

The most insightful piece of fiction to date pertaining to the greatest mistake this country has ever made....our Arab adventure...the Iraq war. Yet, is this about the war, or us, the self absorbed and endlessly distracted American sports consumer? Heartbreakingly funny and absurd.

LibraryThing member Samchan

I’d happily fall in love with a book that was trying to capture and examine our contemporary reality. Politically, I absolutely agree with the themes highlighted (to death) in this book about the calculations behind going to war, about our society’s inane ‘priorities,’—everything. But Ben

Fountain never lets me forget that he’s communicating his messages, that he’s making these oh-so-important statements. Instead of telling a good story or giving us a meaningful character study, all Mr. Fountain did was use his characters like they were action figure toys that he’d inject into *set pieces* as a way to introduce unsubtly yet another example of how hypocritical, ignorant, superficial, or greedy some people are. There is not one section in the book where I couldn’t see the author’s clumsy hands all over each page. There's nothing artful or literary about this at all. Instead of getting lost in the story, lost in Billy’s meditations, I just felt like the author was punching me in the face with messages that weren’t even very deep.

He wants to raise important questions, but how come his treatment of them is so trite? The same themes are repeated over and over and over and over again, in the EXACT same way each time. It is not as if, in revisiting the same themes again and again, we are peeling back different layers of meanings and perspectives. No, the author doesn’t open our eyes to any new dimensions. Seriously, after the first 100 pages (maybe even less), you don’t gain any new insight into Billy, into war, or our superficial culture that the author didn’t already make in the first few pages. Moreover, most of the characters are crude stereotypes, except for Billy (kind of)—and maybe Dime.

If a book doesn’t work for me, then it just doesn’t; there’s no need for extra, special outrage. Most of the time, I’m self-aware enough to chalk up it up to differences in opinions and tastes. Everything’s subjective anyway; yes, I understand. But allow me to be immature here, just this once. In this case, there is a need for extra, special outrage. HOW IS THIS BOOK CONSIDERED WELL-WRITTEN, ENGAGING FICTION???? Why so many people, whose opinions I trust, have trumpeted this as *the* book of the year baffles me to no end.

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LibraryThing member tippycanoegal

My absolutely favorite book of the year. I am disappointed that it did not receive the National Book Award, for which it was a finalist. Paul Fussell once said (and this is a fairly loose quote from memory) that it was impossible to speak clearly about war because the true facts of war are so

gruesome and ghastly that people will turn from the page in horror unless you use a variety of literary devices to soften the blow.

Ben Fountain has found a dark, funny route into the big conversation and his gorgeously written novel observes the complex desires of Americans when it comes to making sense of war. Billy Lynn and the rest of the Bravo company are American heroes on their bizarre American Victory Tour. Where else should they find themselves on Thanksgiving, the night before they are shipped back to Iraq, than as half-time entertainment at a Dallas Cowboys Football Game. With sharp, clear characters, this novel both entertains and skewers the cultural ideals that got us to Iraq in the first place.

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LibraryThing member lauren.castan

I enjoyed this one more than Yellow Birds. Although Yellow Birds did give me bad dreams, this one confirms all the cynical thoughts I have about the war on terror.

LibraryThing member numbernine

A jingoist Texan comes up to a soldier on leave from Iraq, thanks him for his service and spouts a string of familiar lines about terrorism and the importance of the war. For his part, the soldier feels awkward about the praise, ambivalent about his involvement, and suspicious towards his thanker.

If you would enjoy such an exchange, this book is for you--wherein it seems to be repeated about 400 times.

I did enjoy the book's ending though, which I thought nicely encapsulated the country's true power structure (spoiler alert: it's money).

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LibraryThing member mawls

The more I read this book, the more I loved it. The length of the book is over one day of a Victory tour for a group of soldiers who are on leave from Iraq.

LibraryThing member Thommango

Beautiful. A simple, elegant book that does a great job of contrasting a soldier's experience of heroism against a nation of jingoism.

LibraryThing member Schmerguls

I read this because it won the 2012 Book Critics Circle fiction award, it being the 25th such winner I have read. Billy Lynn and his squad are on a national tour after a heroic event in the Iraq War. They are lionized by super-patriots in Texas at a Cowboys game, and a guy is trying to get them a

movie contract. The squad's reaction to the fawning over thmne by Fox-news type Texans is suitably dismissive, and the effort to get a movie contract re the event takes pu much of the action--and Billy meeting up with a Cowboys' cheerleader/ The book has its moments, but I found much of the reading not enjoyable, reeking as the book does with all expletives undeleted.

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LibraryThing member queencersei

Nineteen year old Bill Lynn joined the army rather than go to jail after wreaking the car of the guy who dumped his older sister was in a car accident. While on deployment in Iraq his unit came under deadly fire, which was captured by an embedded Fox News crew. The three minutes of video footage

the news crew caught, catapulted Billy and the nine members of his unit into national heroes. Taken out of Iraq for a whirlwind two week goodwill tour Billy combats his own confusion and trauma of the battle while being paraded around the nation. Zigzagging across the country Billy meets the President, Las Vegas strippers, hordes of grateful Americans and most importantly the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

Bill Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is reminiscent of that other great war classic, Catch 22. Funny, smart, somber and able to capture the absolute absurdity of the situation the characters find themselves in. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is certainly deserving of its reputation as one of the best books of 2012.

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LibraryThing member eenerd

Amazing. Wonderful writing. Wonderful story. About as good as it gets.

LibraryThing member sleahey

Funny , irreverent, sad, hopeful, cynical, lyrical--these all describe this novel that takes place in one day, a Thanksgiving Dallas Cowboys football frenzy. The guys of Bravo Company are wrapping up their heroes' tour of the country with royal treatment at this football game, and hoping to cement

a lucrative movie deal. Fountain's writing is poetic and captivating, making the reader believe in Billy and his perceptive insights. The voice and dialogs seem spot on, adding to the immediacy of the narrative.

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