RaveThe New RepublicIf these characters come home, they don’t stay for long … The anxiety that hums through Klay’s prose mirrors the state of American security, post-September 11. Security wonks call it ‘new normal’—a hundred small wars running concurrently, rather than a big one every other generation … Can narrative organize this disorganized ‘new normal’? Klay’s Marines swap stories when dead-drunk, as in ‘Unless It’s A Sucking Chest Wound,’ tearing off scabs in their unresolved lives; they relate them to clueless civilians, who seek to coopt them for political ends, as in ‘War Stories.’
