A novel in three nested stories--a group of liberals at a barbecue in Utah, an American soldier deployed to Baghdad, and an Iraqi mathematician on the eve of the invasion--exploring how the Iraq war causes all their lives to intersect.
War Porn concludes in an act of chilling brutality, a distillation of Mr. Scranton’s vision of the American misadventure in Iraq and a fitting end to one of the best and most disturbing war novels in years.
War Porn offers a view of the American military unlike anything else written about Iraq or Afghanistan ... fighting is peripheral to the story. Instead, Scranton chooses to focus on the struggle for humanity that comes in quiet moments ... Scranton resists the temptation to deliver a redemptive or sympathetic moment for soldiers who misbehave or suffer humiliation ... at times Scranton’s Iraqi characters seem unable to speak without using a parable or sharing sage bits of wisdom. But Qasim’s story is critical to the book’s universe and delivers a crushing payout in the end ... an undeniably courageous book.
[Scranton has a] keen reportorial eye and [a] Michael Herr-like gift for conveying the surreal feel of modern war ... the novel is at its most persuasive not when Mr. Scranton is laboriously trying to illustrate his arguments but when he trusts his own myriad gifts as a storyteller.
