At the beginning of this book I felt daunted by the prospect of a narrative poem at over 200 pages long wondering what would it achieve that could not be expressed in the format of a novel yet by the end I was entirely absorbed by the writing and felt that as a reader the style and form allowed me to fully appreciate the dark beauty of the poetry and the experience of the main protagonist Walker a D Day veteran.
This is a book that is incredibly atmospheric as over more than a decade we follow Walker as he gets a job in newspapers in New York before moving to Los Angeles and spending time in San Francisco reporting on the homelessness of veterans. As a lover of film I loved the reference to post-war American movies , those hard boiled detective stories where the smell of cigarette smoke, cordite and bourbon ooze of the screen and fed in to narrative of Walker as he walks the streets passing film crews and observing the sites of famous scenes .
It also brilliantly explores the experience and the effect of PTSD and how it gradually destroys Walker's ability to develop relationships beyond the itinerant veterans who haunt the streets and the drink hardened fellow reporters.
The book shows us glimpses of what could have been in his life in NewFoundland before the war with a poignancy that reinforces the horror of his service and its emotional impact and the description of scenes as he disembarks in Normandy and marches through France are visceral . Some of the pictures of brutalities that are inflicted on his comrades which he subsequently revenges are perhaps amongst the toughest depictions of war I've read.
Walker's emotional disintegration is shadowed by the gradual destruction of the old city as it is bulldozed for modern developments and the ending is a difficult read as Walker finally confronts his ghosts.
A brilliant book and definitely one that I am still thinking about several weeks after I finished it.