Redeployment has gotten loads of acclaim and attention (National Book Award for Fiction 2014, et al.), all of it justified. This collection of short stories covers a range of experience related to the Iraq war, both in Iraq and at home. It's impossible for me to say whether Klay has fairly or accurately depicted a soldier's experience; that's for others to rule on. But I can say his writing is completely engrossing, intense, and disturbing in a way that doesn't feel gratuitous. My favorite of the collection is "Money as a Weapons System," told (and maybe this is why I preferred it) from the point of view of a Foreign Service Officer rather than a soldier. It sketches the lunatic interplay of State, Defense, and local sheikhs in 'development projects' and features the collection's only flashes of comic relief.
As good as Redeployment is, it's also in my view the work of a writer who is just beginning to hone his craft. The stories are clearly meant to feature distinct narrators, but the voices are not extremely well-distinguished. The stories occasionally feel repetitive in their structure if not their content. Considering the wallop he packs as a beginner I am not sure I have the guts to read his coming mature work. We'll see.
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