A piercing read about speaks to the truth about the destruction caused by war, and the cruelty of the industries that keep it going. The irony of US aid policies to send ‘help’ after being responsible for this destruction in the first place would be laughable if it didn’t exact such tragic human consequences.

You must have heard that god created couples so that his creation could multiply and overpopulate the world. But god also created couples so that they could hound each other in life, betray each other and then haunt each other after one of them dies.


I am not sure that I would have kept reading this if it wasn't for being an ARC. Lots of smart comments about aid, international relations and foreign colonial wars, but the story didn't grab me. One downed pilot, one dog and one fifteen year old refugee who has lost his brother. Although initially it read to me as if it was something that felt all too real, it was as though the author lost faith in telling that story and instead diverted into magical realism territory.

When someone dies in a raid or a shooting or when someone’s throat is slit, their last drop of blood transforms into a tiny red bird and flies away. And then reappears when we are trying hard to forget them, when we think we have forgotten them, when we think we have learnt to live without them, when we utter those stupid words that we have ‘moved on’. It’s just a reminder that they may have gone but they haven’t really left yet.

2.5 stars.

My brain feels a little scrambled right now. I thought I knew what I was getting with this book and, for the first two thirds, I did get that, more or less: an ironic satire on the modern cycle of war and international aid. We’re introduced to the bleak aftermath of war in a remote corner of an unnamed Middle Eastern country. Smart, ambitious teenager Momo has dreams of becoming a billionaire entrepreneur, fuelled by the stories he’s read in his dad’s magazine about the Fortune 500. But how’s a kid to get started in a place like this, where even the aid workers have given up and drifted away, and the local American air base has shut up shop? To make matters worse, Momo’s big brother has been missing for months, his dog Mutt has got himself electrocuted, and an American pilot has just wandered in from the desert. And what of those red birds? Well, that’s where it all gets more than a little weird.

We’re on solid ground for the most part. Momo has grown up in a community that was once a village, then (post-bombing) became a refugee camp and now (post-more-bombing) is just desperately trying to get by. Things weren’t always this bad. Back when the Americans worked at the Hangar, there were jobs and aid programmes. But then things changed. Boys from the community would go off to work at the Hangar and never come back. And now Momo’s brother Ali has gone off to work there too, and they’ve never heard from him again. Has Ali really been trained and sent off to San Jose, as his father hopes? Momo doesn’t believe it. And while his mother mourns her lost boy, and his father clings loyally to his trust in the departed Americans, Momo knows that sometimes you’ve just got to do things yourself. Fortunately, he’s not going to be alone. He’s got Mutt, the loyalest (and also, in Momo’s opinion, the craziest) dog in the world.

Mutt would disagree about being the craziest dog in the world. In fact, since that day he managed to electrocute himself by peeing on an electricity pole, he’s seen the world amazingly clearly. He’s even become something of a philosopher. And he watches with indulgence as Momo conjures up his wacky get-rich-quick projects, their names inspired by the aid programmes preached by USAID: Falcons for Ethical Hunting (it isn’t a falcon but a single, injured kite); or Global Sands. But even Mutt is about to be baffled by the emergence of a strange American from the desert sands. Claiming to be a pilot who has crash-landed, the man is the oddest creature who Mutt has ever encountered. For, in a world of strong smells and nuances, this American has no scent.

Major Ellie would say that his lack of scent is the least interesting thing about him. He’s just walked out of the desert, after eight days surviving against all the odds, and found himself in some godforsaken backwater where nobody seems inclined to help him get home. To make matters worse, this is the place he was about to bomb when he lost control of his plane. But they don’t need to know that. Taken in hand by a pugnacious teenager (Momo), a mangy dog (Mutt), and the sanctimonious sole remaining aid worker (known to all as Lady Flowerbody), Ellie finds that nothing comes for free. If he’s going to get out, and go home to his wife Cath, he’s going to have to play by Momo’s rules.

So far so good. The book read like a bizarre mashup of At Five in the Afternoon and Catch 22, but that’s OK; I was running with it. Hanif has some acute observations about the strange mercies of Western governments, and the way that formerly independent communities find themselves, bafflingly, becoming ‘the tourist destination for foreign people with good intentions‘. After, that is, they’ve been bombed by foreign people with less good intentions. Although, as Ellie claims at one point, where would the aid and compassion industry be without the bomber pilots who create the need for such aid and compassion in the first place? Hanif’s good at catching the voices on both side of the fence: the prematurely wily, cynical narrative of the ambitious Momo; and the entitled complacency of Major Ellie, who finds himself on a Cultural Sensitivity crash course of his very own.

And then, around the last third, everything goes wild. We move into practically hallucinogenic territory. The final few chapters feel as if they were written under the influence of the lump of opium that Momo chews at one point, mistaking it for chocolate. What the heck is going on here? I kept feeling that there must be some deeply profound and wise allegory that I was missing, because it felt as if the book had just swerved into some surreal and absurdist alternate universe. The allegory of the red birds I understand, and I even think it’s rather beautiful. But all that stuff in the Hangar… my goodness. Hanif cuts his imagination free and it’s just… wild. A bit too wild. So, mixed feelings on this. I enjoyed reading a novel told from the perspective of the people who have to make lives in these damaged places, and especially one which adds a little more snark to the genre. Momo is an appealing narrator, full of the convincing bolshiness of adolescence (and Mutt is equally enjoyable, usually the sole person who actually understands what’s going on around him, but unable to convey it to his dense human friends). But I felt the end let down the rest of the story, diminishing its smartly satirical clout and leaving the book flailing in some odd, liminal, half-mawkish territory. Most of it would have been a sound three-star job, if not slightly more, but the ending challenged that.

A peculiar balance, but perhaps one that others have decoded more ably than I can. I look forward to reading other reviews (and perhaps hearing some of your thoughts).

For the review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2018/11/04/red-birds-mohammed-hanif/

Does a fifteen-year-old post-war profiteer stand a chance to find his older brother?

Major Ellie’s Strike Eagle 2 comes down in the desert leaving him wandering around aimlessly. Hours in a simulator, a pin on a map and a dim recollection of instructions for this mission cannot prepare him for the reality he must face. He turns his overall inside out to be less conspicuous and waits for the angels to rescue him. Instead, drawn by anguished cries, he finds Mutt.

Mutt, disillusioned by his owner, skulks off into the desert deciding to withdraw from the heartless household, where they never appreciate his intellect. His owner, Momo, is a fifteen-year-old businessman who owns a Jeep Cherokee and is said to be an evil entrepreneur. However, behind his swagger, sharp tongue and fancy boots he is still a child trying to make sense of Father Dear’s bureaucracy, Mother Dear’s lack of interest and the USAID counsellor’s attempt to treat his supposed post-traumatic stress disorder.
He mistrusts Ellie from the moment he lays eyes on him as Ellie represents “everything that is wrong with their camp, with its dependent refugee status and its eternal wait for some plane to appear in the sky and relieve them of their misery” - until he enlists Ellie’s help to find his brother, Ali. Momo hero-worships Bro Ali who taught him tricks for survival in a refugee camp. Apart from the need for a ration card and serviceable English, Ali even tried to show him how to build a transistor radio with components he brought from the hangar.

Written from the perspective of Ellie, Momo and Mutt the novel is a satirical depiction of a post war refugee camp in the desert. Although I found the satire effective, the plot mostly encompasses the thought processes of the main narrators which makes it quite monotonous and tedious to get through. I found it difficult to relate to the characters and the storyline did not hold my attention. What I enjoyed most was Mutt as narrator and Hanif’s depiction of human nature from a four-legged point of view. Due to the loose style, a language purist would have difficulty with this read.

Ange

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

Wow, this novel is greater than the sum of all of its collective parts, even when those components are spectacular in their own right. Firstly, I wish to address the many reviewers who have labelled this as weird, and just like those kids who were labelled as such throughout my school years, all it really means is different. If different, unique and inspired aren't words that pique your interest and feed your fascination for reading this book then I can't think what would.

Sumptuous and beautifully poetic, Hanif's prose simply sings from the pages and truly denotes a master at work, a wordsmith if you will. What makes this particularly refreshing is that the author tells the story through various unusual devices, including Mutt, the talking dog who narrates. Some people found it difficult to take this part of the plot seriously, but I feel it was an ingenious move which tells the powerful tale through a different medium. Despite the story being one of darkness, poverty and war, it encompasses so much more than that, with a smattering of humour interspersed throughout creating a balance and contrast between the light and dark. The final denouement was also a fitting way to conclude.

I am a strong believer that some of the best things in life are "weird", and this certainly applies in the case of Red Birds. I'll be going back to read Hanif's previous novels and look forward to reading more of his work in the future. A fully deserved five-stars, I'd give it more if I could!

Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC. I was not required to post a review, and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

I am left feeling a little weird about this, I just didn't get it. I am not sure if it was the style of writing or the story line. It got weirder and weirder and not in a good way. The first book I've read for Netgalley and haven't liked :(

DNF. Was enjoying the book until the dog started speaking. Completely lost interest after that.

Thank you for the opportunity to read.

Major Ellie is a fighter pilot who is shot down in the desert in an unnamed country. After several days, near to death, he finds shelter in the refugee camp he was sent to bomb. He is rescued by Momo, a young man who is eager to begin his career in entrepreneurship, even though he lives in a camp where there is nothing left to sell, or even steal.

Momo’s dog, Mutt, (who is shown rather more concern than Ellie, perhaps deservedly so) is a wise observer of all the goings-on in the camp, with a sound observation of Momo’s family, the major, and the woman Momo’s mother calls Lady Flowerbody, a western aid worker who is apparently conducting research there.

Narrating dog aside, this initially feels like a realist narrative with some nice satirical touches, like Momo’s use of business jargon gleaned from intermittent TV and the occasional copy of Forbes. Ellie realises the inadequacy of his cultural awareness training, Momo looks for ways to co-opt Lady Flowerbody to his schemes, his father continues to perform his duties for the military, even though they left and stopped paying him some time ago. Underlying it all is a sense of both grief and the relentless desire to survive, even in the most hopeless of circumstances.

Gradually, you realise that all is not all it seems. The mysterious Hangar, where Momo’s brother went to work and never returned, the absent military, some elements of Ellie’s story that don’t quite make sense, lead to an awareness that this is a world where all is not quite as it appears.

I really enjoyed the early part of the novel, the absurdist humour, the vivid characters. For me the end, where things should have moved faster, felt a little too drawn out. However I did find myself thinking about this book, and what it meant, for several days after I’d read it.

Mutt is the hero of this dish and Mohammed Hanif imagines brilliantly the lot of one of our four legged friends. If only we could all imagine, from a canine point of view, the futility of the human conditioning toward conflict.
Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing and Netgalley for this ARC

Major Ellie is a US airman who has ejected from his plane into a desert in Afghanistan. As he only has four biscuits, some After Eight mints and little water, he has to find fresh water quickly.

He comes across Momo, a 15 year old boy,and his dog Mutt, they live in a refugee camp.

The first part of the is a desert survival and refugee tale is told from the different perspectives of Major Ellie, Momo and Mutt.

Ellie as he searches for water; Momo trying to find ways to survive and Mutt who is the most eloquent generally of all three.

Then it seemed to lose its way a little, with Momo’s family life and details of the war. By the end I was a little lost as things just get weird.

While I’m sure this is cleverly done, tying in the Red Birds that appear now and then, I didn’t really engage with the characters but I did feel it highlights the absolute futility of war. A clever well written book albeit weird at times.

I would like to thank the Author/the Publishers/NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a fair and honest review

If we crossed [book:Catch-22|168668] with [book:Frankenstein in Baghdad|30780005], threw in some Salman Rushdie stylistics and maybe a soupcon of [book:Home Fire|33621427], with a smattering of [book:The Girl in Green|29510167] over the top would Red Birds be the result?

I see other reviewers have used the word 'weird' about it with some consistency and I can understand why: this is certainly a book where we need to let go of linear storytelling expectations and ditch realism as a mode of understanding and reflecting the world. Hanif combines the logical absurdity of war made famous by Heller with a wonderfully imaginative way of engaging with existentialist fundamentals of life and death. And he's funny in a sharp, observational, politically-astute way, something that he shares with [author:Derek B. Miller|1192027]: 'she has a stash of bottled water somewhere. I am gonna save the world but let me first ensure there is enough Perrier', 'it was simple, they bombed us and then sent well-educated people to look into our mental health needs'.

Having one of the narrators a dog called Mutt (what else?) might make this sound twee but it isn't in this case. Mutt is both perhaps the most self-consciously philosophical of all the characters and the most stoical and enduring, even when his leg is broken by his young master. His love is unconditional and he understands instinctively the significance of the titular red birds when the doctor is floundering with scientific explanations.

There's a slight lull in the middle but Hanif gathers everything together for a spectacular finale: imaginative, figurative and quite urgent in its emotions. It's rare for an author to be so in control of his material, especially when his palette is as broad as the one here: war, contemporary politics, American interventionism, family, love, life and death. And even more rare that a text can combine satirical throwaways with characters endowed with life, and deal with such big matters with such imaginative originality. I'm in danger of gushing but, honestly, I loved this!

One of several disappointments in this year's Man Booker list was the lack of any non UK/Irish and North American voices, a lack that is increasingly becoming a feature of the prize in recent years. One obvious omission was this book, the latest novel by Mohammed Hanif, who was previously longlisted for his debut novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, in the deliberately more diverse list chosen by the 2008 jury. Interestingly though the 2008 panel had to call in the novel as it wasn't submitted by the publishers, and one wonder if publishers rather than the jury are responsible for the rather narrow 2018 list.

Red Birds is set in and around a refugee camp in the desert in an unnamed country, under US military occupation, albeit the reason for the intervention seems unclear to those on the ground on both sides ("this place may look poorer than Afghanistan, and more violent than Sudan, but thank god there is no ideology at stake. Not for them, not for us. They bomb us because they assume we are related to bad Arabs. We steal from them because that’s all we can do.")

The novel mainly switches between three first person narrators:

Ellie, a US an air-force pilot who has crash landed in the desert after a bombing mission failed, a follow up to a mission on which his superior, Colonel Slattert disappeared. He is disoriented and struggling with the adequacy of his survival kit:

"They give you a 65-million-dollar machine to fly, with the smartest bomb that some beam rider in Salt Lake City took years to design, you burn fuel at the rate of fifteen gallons per second and if you get screwed they expect you to survive on four energy biscuits and an organic smoothie. And look, a mini pack of After Eights. Somebody’s really spent a lot of time trying to provide the comforts of a threestar hotel. Here, have another towel. Now go die."

Momo, a 15 year old boy in the camp, but a self-designated entrepreneur with ambitious plans e.g. for a Scorpions Racing Circuit:

"I became a businessman. I buy and I sell. I provide services and I charge. I make deals and I take my percent age. While people discuss problems of growing up, I find solutions to the problems that grown-ups have. Some might say that I am an evil entrepreneur, a post-war profiteer, a petty black marketer, and I am gonna tell you that is jealousy speak."

And Mutt, Momo's dog (!). Mutt' s narration is the first sign of the somewhat fantastical nature of the story. His thoughts are partly on a dog's perspective on humans:

"There’s a big difference between biters and lickers but the human race is not given to subtleties and most people can’t spot the difference. They see the bared teeth, they don’t see the lolling tongue. They see the curled up, shivering tail and not the intellect at work. They hear the growl and not the whine that says give me some love, oh please give me some love."

But he is also the most philosophical of all the characters, something he explains by an incident just before the book started where he was electrocuted:

"Yet in that moment I became me. Before that I was just another above-average Mutt with common desires, beastly urges and an appetite for home-cooked food, but in that moment I rose above the ranks of common strays who had adopted troubled families and were trying their best. Momo says my brain got fried in that accident. I think I became a philosopher that day. It was the worst day of my life. But who knows maybe it was the best day of my life."

In particular, Mutt is the one who theorises about the significance of the red birds (see below).

The sections narrated by Ellie have a flavour of Catch 22, and in part I suspect reflect the author's own experience as an air force pilot. From a New Yorker interview in 2016:

"In the Air Force, Hanif trained as a fighter pilot, flying an American-made T-37 twin-engine jet. But, he said, “I hated every minute I was there.” Whenever he could, he shirked duty to immerse himself in novels by Graham Greene and Joseph Heller; sometimes he read to his fellow-officers from “Catch-22,” which seemed especially relevant. “This was the life we’d been living, minus the war,” he said."

(www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/09/a-pakistani-novelist-tests-the-limits)

Ellie ends up being saved (reluctantly) by Mutt and Momo and is taken to the camp, which he realises is the very one he was sent to bomb:

"I guess it might have been a village once but now it’s only a settlement of sorts. I have never seen a refugee camp for real, only in pictures and TV news. I expect neat rows of tents, gleaming ambulances, people standing in orderly queues waiting to get their rations from gap-year students with dreadlocks and nose rings. What I see is what I have already seen on my Strike Eagle’s monitor, just before I hesitated to press the button: a series of junkyards, rows of burnt-out cars piled on each other, abandoned tanks and armoured vehicles, a small mountain of disused keyboards and mobile phone shells, piles of rubbish with smoke rising off them. The camp is a sea of corrugated blue plastic roofs, stretching like a low, filthy sky, broken by piles of grey plastic poles and overflowing blue plastic rubbish bins.

This is the kind of place where evil festers, Colonel Slatter had said. All I can see are failed attempts at starting kitchen gardens, neat squares marked with pebbles, half-grown stumps in little plastic pots. No littering signs over piles of litter. This seems like a failing effort to keep some distance between children and the impending plague. This place needed no help from the skies. What was I thinking? What was Colonel Slatter thinking?"

But he rationalises:

"If I didn’t obliterate cities, who would build refugee camps? If I didn’t destroy, who would rebuild? Where would all the world’s empathy go? Who would host exhibitions in the picture galleries of Berlin, who would have fundraising balls in London? Where would all the students on their gap years go? If I stop wearing this uniform and quit my job, the world’s sympathy machine will grind to a halt."

The area is home to many small red birds. The camp's resident scientist speculates that these are canaries mutated by depleted uranium, but Mutt has a different explanation:

"Red birds are real. The reason we don’t see them is because we don’t want to. Because if we see them, we’ll remember. When someone dies in a raid or a shooting or when someone’s throat is slit, their last drop of blood transforms into a tiny red bird and flies away. And then reappears when we are trying hard to forget them, when we think we have forgotten them , when we think we have learnt to live without them, when we utter those stupid words that we have ‘moved on’."

And the concept of those missing in conflict seems key to the novel, not just Colonel Slattery and indeed Ellie himself but also Momo's elder brother, Ali. Momo and Alis's father worked in logistics in the US hangar that neighbours the camp and Ali had worked as a spotter for the US airforce for their bombing raids, which makes it all the more strange when their own house is bombed. Their father then took Ali, several months before the novel, to sign on for a permanent job at the hangar but Ali never returns and the hangar is abandoned.

The final section of the novel takes a metaphysical turn as a group suddenly return to the hangar "some dressed in uniform like those soldiers who used to come out in convoys to get their water supply, now a bunch of tired soldiers returning to their base. They are floating over the sand heading towards the Hangar." Mutt notices something particularly odd - they have no smell.

"The gates of the Hangar are open, the floodlights have been turned on, there are no aeroplanes but the windsock is fluttering, the giant machines in the Hangar are squeaking and whirling. Why have they come back? Have they brought our Bro back? Suddenly I remember. My fried brains might be slow but they can do the job. I know the person who doesn’t have a smell. I need to go tell Momo that there is a ghost under our own roof."

Overall a book that doesn't yield its messages easily and one that I would have like to see on the Booker longlist, if only to discuss with other readers.

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.

3.5 stars

In this crazy contemporary world we sometimes need to look to the world of fiction to make sense of it. This I believe is the case with Mohammed Hanif's new novel with its absurdist and metaphysical look at the realities of what the impact of the term foreign intervention really means on all those involved in such a conflict. The story revolves around Major Ellie an American pilot who crashes in the desert while on a bombing mission. After several days dehydrating and hallucinating he is found and taken to a refugee centre (the original target of his mission) by a 15 year old youth called Mono. The story is narrated in the first person by a number of characters that include Mono's dog who is arguably the most rational and lucid of them all. We learn that Mono's brother was taken by the American forces to work at a nearby hanger but he never returned back. Also in the camp is a female aid worker who is undertaking research on her book on the Teenage Muslim Mind. As the book progresses to its conclusion it becomes more and more surreal and the plot increasing fantastical.

I really liked this book but I can understand due to it being outside certain fictional parameters it may not be to everyone's taste. Challenging and thought provoking it looks at how irrational conflict can be and how it provides an escape from painful realities. Ellie would rather go on bombing missions than spend time trying to save his failing marriage and those in the refuge camp are under more danger from the people who are supposedly there to protect them. If you like something a bit different then I can certainly recommend this.

Red Birds. Major Ellie, a US airman, has ejected from his plane in the desert. It’s never quite clear which desert – sometimes it is near Mosul, at others it is near Kandahar. Major Ellie has to find water and a way out pretty damn quick. So it is fortuitous when he is discovered by Mutt the dog, and Mutt’s owner Momo, a fifteen year old boy who lives in the refugee camp.

The first section of the book feels familiar. It’s a desert survival/refugee camp narrative just like many others. The Kills comes to mind. The section (and indeed the first 80% of the novel) is told from alternating perspectives of Ellie, Momo and Mutt. Ellie as he searches for water; Momo trying to find entrepreneurial angles following the closure of the US army hangar that had offered jobs; and Mutt generally philosophising and giving expository monologue. Even if this section is following a well worn path, it follows it well.

The second section finds Ellie staying with Momo and his parents. We meet Momo's parents, Father Dear and Mother Dear. We learn more about the community, more about the American occupation, and more about Momo's brother, Bro Ali. This section doesn't work quite as well. There feels like quite a bit of padding, killing time before we can move the novel to a denouement. Momo worked better as an independent character than as a junior member of a family. And things start to get weird. The lines between current and back stories seem to blur.

In the final section, the characters all head off to the hangar and madness reigns supreme. New narrators come forward and tell what feels like a chaotic story.

By the end, the reader is left with just a sense of bewilderment. Picking back over the story, there is a logic to it; there is a clearly definable point at which things got weird, and a way of tying this to the strange red birds that appear every now and then. This is cleverly done, but the technical brilliance perhaps comes at the expense of narrative drive and the overall reading experience. It is difficult to feel we know the characters or exactly what drives them. They sort of unravel. Perhaps this is a depiction of the ambiguity of a war that is waged on nations supposedly to support the people against their own tyrants. Perhaps it is about sides in a war being mutable, changing constantly as bargains are made and broken. Perhaps it is about the futility of fighting to improve lives that are inherently temporary.

Red Birds shows signs of a great writer with a great imagination. The beginning is great and overall there is a sense of satisfaction at seeing what Mohammed Hanif has done. I'm glad to have read it, and could give a qualified recommendation to others. But there is also a feeling that this could and should have been brilliant.

I’ll start with a confession. If I had known before I picked this book up that a large part of it would be narrated by a dog, I probably would not have wanted to read it. I have a poor track record with books narrated by animals. Perhaps especially, as in this book, when the animal concerned turns out to be the most erudite, intelligent and eloquent of the narrators.

Is it a good thing, then, that I did not know this and requested a copy of the book via NetGalley? I find this an almost impossible question to answer because I am really not sure what to make of this novel.

The set up in the opening chapters is fairly straightforward and is at least partly explained in the publisher’s advance blurb (release is scheduled for Autumn 2018). Ellie is a pilot in the US Air Force whose plane has come down for reasons we never quite understand and who finds himself lost in the desert. He is musing on his relationship with Cath back in the US. Momo lives in a refugee camp where he is worried about the disappearance of his brother Ali. And Mutt is his dog. These three characters act as our narrators taking turns to narrate a chapter (until the final sections of the book when there is an explosion of new narrators). When events conspire to mean Mutt heads out into the desert to escape from the camp, it is not difficult to work out how the stories will merge.

However, once all the protagonists come together, things gradually start to get weirder and weirder and the final chapters of the book are very strange. Hanif has been asked where the book is set and will only say “in my head” and this is a sort of clue to the weirdness that arrives. And whilst the final 100 pages of the book are fairly difficult to read because of the dreamlike narrative where lots of strange things start to happen, it is clear that there is some kind of logic behind it. It really is a bit like a dream where things don’t make that much sense in the cold light of day, but the intent and the message is not lost because of that.

The crux of the matter appears to be what has happened to Ali. Ali is hardly seen in the book, but his fate, or uncertainty about it, is what drives the plot and triggers the almost hallucinatory conclusion. It makes the novel one about family and love in a time of war and about difficulties caused by American intervention. There is much more to war than the front line fighting and we see some of that here. I look forward to reading what some of my American Goodreads friends make of the book. Some of this doesn’t become properly apparent until you finish the book and are able to reflect back on it - whilst reading, you have to grab hold of your hat and hold on until you get to the end, but once you get there, you can sit back and reflect.

I know it is purely personal, but the book is spoiled for me by the non-human narrator. But, apart from that, it is an interesting novel to read.

My thanks to Bloomsbury via NetGalley for a review copy in advance of publication.

This book, with it's flashes of brilliance and thorough weirdness is hard for me to rate. It is the kind of book that Booker judges love. Clever, ridiculously funny in parts while it's utter grimness makes it not amusing in the slightest. There is no doubt that the author is a master of metaphor and the writing is engaging, particularly in the beginning and end but I found myself having to re-read parts to figure out whose voice I was reading.

Ellie is a pilot whose plane has come down in the desert while he is on a bombing run. He is starving, dying of thirst and reflecting on his relationship with Cath his wife while he slowly runs out of life. Mutt is a dog, fed up with the treatment he receives, he has headed out into the desert to die and comes across Ellie much to his annoyance. Next up is Momo, a teenage boy who arrives to collect Mutt and who is convinced that Ellie is stealing his dog. Ellie eventually convinces Momo to give him a ride to his village which turns out to the be the refugee camp that he was supposed to be bombing in the first place. So far so funny! But it is the kind of funny which is tinged with tragedy, threat and sorrow. The characters you meet will each have so many sadnesses as they deal with the realities of life under threat by the very armed force that supposedly keeps them safe. It is lies upon lies and weirdness galore.

I loved the final chapters of this book but the middle section was like a metaphysical journey where I was never quite sure what I was reading. I guess that was intentional, this book takes you on a journey into a world seldom seen, these people are forgotten in so many ways.

I didn't love this book but I think it is clever and interesting and I'm glad I chose it. It is a reminder that war is much bigger than the battle at the frontline.

Thanks to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for giving me access to this book.