Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Bookworm9

If Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" is fiction that reads like autobiography, then "If I Die in a Combat Zone..." is an autobiography that reads like fiction. It's not that O'Brien's story is unbelievable, just that he writes it in a very literary way. It's a well-written and indepth portrayl of life as an American soldier in Vietnam, and we get to hear about O'Brien's fears and near-desertion. However, he never quite reaches the breath-taking realism of the later "The Things They Carried," which is, in my opinion, the better book.