Cacciato is a member of a U S Army platoon in Vietnam and he goes AWOL.
His platoon take off after him and once this starts the reader is taken on a mystical walk where the platoon walks to Paris to get him back.
So, the book is divided into two parts, there is vignettes of real combat scene's that the platoon is involved in and then there is the ' magic' scenes where they walk through countries and experience lots of things that are metaphors for whats happening in the world.
The writing is brilliant, but I still don't ' get it' anymore this time than when I read it 30 years ago.
To me its very dated and is a real 'child of its time' written in the late 70's, when everyone was still clinging to the 60's.
As a war novel its a bust ,as a novel to me it's the type of novel that would go down well with the literary set for book awards, for that type of reader its probably gold, but its not for me and even if I'm still around in 30 years I won't pick it up again. (1978)
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