The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Power

Power’s own experience in the Iraq War is turned into a brief, affecting probable classic of a novel, like The things they carried was for the Vietnam period. So few of us have any contact with those in the military and what they go through in the oddly remote modern wars in even remoter countries.   One forgets how impossibly young most soldiers are – in the case of the two friends in The yellow birds, 18 and 21.  Engrossing, disturbing, real.  244 pp.