Cherry is a novel based on the Nico Walker's life of war and addiction. The book opens on the unnamed main character robbing a bank then backtracks to the story of what happened in his life to put him in that position. He goes to war and is, as a result, left broken and angry. He turns to drug to heal his pain and sooth his anger, until his addiction becomes its own monster that needs taming.
Nico Walker does a superb job of bringing the reader into the mind of a damaged and flawed addict. It helped me to better understand addiction and an addicts single-mindedness pursuit of their next high. The intelligence used to get the drugs is quick shoved aside when it comes to his own self preservation. While hard to read at times, I believe it is a worthwhile read.

I loved the writing style in this one! Can't believe this was a debut! I loved the humour and the love story <3

Cherry was an eye-opening glimpse into a world I know exists but am not that familiar with. I surprised myself by laughing out loud at some scenes, and am haunted by the gore of others. A must read for the post-recession era.

I am a member of the ALA Carnegie Medal Committee. This title was suggested for the 2019 Award but it did not make the Longlist. See the complete longlist <a href="http://www.ala.org/awardsgrants/carnegieadult/longlists/"> here.

I was kind of disappointed in this book. It was clearly written by someone who was not an author. It could be difficult to follow at times and there was a lot of military jargon that was lost on someone who was not familiar. The story was good though, although the main character was not very likeable.

I couldn't put this one down. The author's voice is compelling - like he's just laying it all out for you, one-on-one. The parts of the book that nettled me also felt authentic to the author's voice and story, so it's hard to question their inclusion. It's a novel that made me look at the struggle of addiction with new eyes.

First thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy of this book.

I was excited to hear about this book set in Cleveland and was definitely looking forward to reading it. But...I found the self-loathing, totally messed up protagonist to be a little too much. Life isn’t fair and many things everyone deals with are boring, stupid and many times just plain old cruel. To choose to blame everything on a messed up system and use that to justify robbing banks to support a drug habit is hard for me to understand.

That being said why do we continue to send generation after generation to war only to see them come home with so many issues???

I’m glad I read the book but....didn’t really get any closure.

There is nothing about this book that is an easy read, between the scenes set in Iraq to the descent into a severe heroin addiction and a life of crime. Additionally, knowing that the author wrote this novel in jail, where he remains for two more years on his sentence makes this story all the more frightening because of the truth behind the fiction. This book is not for the faint of the heart, but is a powerful read, nonetheless.

2003, Cleveland. He has just arrived at uni when he meets Emily and falls for her immediately. They love each other passionately, just as they love Ecstasy. When Emily moves back home to Elba and splits up, he loses control and is expelled from college soon after. The army promises an interesting future – or better: a future at all. As a medic he is briefly trained before they send him to Iraq. A year in the Middle East, a year in the war. What he sees is unimaginable and to avoid the pictures in his head and to deal with the everyday loss of comrades, he needs more and more pills. When he returns, he cannot find a way back in life. With Emily, he’s got an on-and-off relationship which is mainly marked by their common use of heroin. A normal life seems possible, but the constant need of money for more drugs and the fact of passing out frequently hinders them from actually having it.

“Cherry” is the story of an average young man whose life spirals down into the abyss. It’s not the one big event that throws him off course, it’s a bit here and there, a relationship that breaks up, not getting enough credits at college, simply losing the aim in life. Of course, the experiences made in the war are a major event and it is hard to imagine that anybody can live through this without serious psychological disturbances or PTSD. The novel brings out the worst that drugs can do to somebody and it underlines how long this can go on without people around noticing anything, how long they can keep up appearances before wreaking havoc.

Yet, it is not only the topic, the narrator’s life that is shown bluntly by Nico Walker. What he does masterly, too, is to adapt the language to the situation:

The car bomb did what car bombs do and four were dead in the market. It would have been more but the sheep took most of the blast. So you had flesh and blood and wool on the pavement. You had bloodstains on the pavement, little lakes of blood.

There is no reason to embellish anything, it’s just the blunt reality that Walker describes in the most brutal and direct way. Most of the soldiers were “Cherries” which gives the novel its title: soldiers who have never been in a fight and whose behaviour is unpredictable and therefore a danger to the whole platoon. They were ill prepared in every possible way, but the worst is that they were ill prepared to return to a life in the civilian society. Walker doesn’t beat about the bush, his novel accuses their treatment, as well as the way drug addicts are taken care of, or rather: not taken care of. He shows a reality that nobody wants to see but which exists among us. The style of writing might not be for everybody, but it is perfect for this novel.