Review by New York Times Review
IN the American wars of the 20th century, soldiers of the rear echelon were derided as "in the rear with the gear," or worse. However, the whole concept of a "rear," predicated on a definable "front," started slipping in Vietnam and met its official death in Somalia. By the time of the Iraq occupation, the place where clerks did their clerking and infantrymen got a plate of hot chow was no longer in a relatively safe rear area but in the forward operating base, or FOB, smack in the middle of everything, and the soldiers stationed there became known as Fobbits. As a former real-life Fobbit, assigned to a public affairs team in Iraq, David Abrams puts his knowledge of this world to good use in his first novel, also called "Fobbit." Although the modern FOB is inherently more dangerous than a rear encampment miles from enemy lines, the comforts provided to the troops there are light-years beyond anything available to soldiers in a war zone even 10 years before the Iraq invasion. Burger King and Dairy Queen have been in some FOBs; even more significant, I think, is access to media, e-mail and the telephone. (As a long-serving member of the Navy SEALs told me recently, "I'm not sure it's healthy for either my wife or me to be on the phone with each other about a plumbing contractor less than 45 minutes after I've put a bullet between another man's eyes.") The strange normality of life in Iraq's FOBs, juxtaposed against the war's brutality just yards from an air-conditioned fast-food joint, leads to strange parallels between the two worlds: "Dead soldiers," Abrams writes, "were now little more than . . . objects to be loaded onto the back of C-130s somewhere and delivered like pizzas to the United States." Those are the thoughts of Staff Sgt. Chance Gooding Jr., the protagonist of "Fobbit." Stationed at FOB Triumph, in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces, Gooding is a writer in the public affairs office of an Army infantry division, responsible for news releases that turn the "sucking chest wounds and the dismemberments into something palatable - ideally, something patriotic." In Vietnam the Army inflated the enemy body count as proof of progress; in Iraq, Gooding's commander juggles our own body count to ensure that the 2,000th American casualty is heroic enough to show the fight's importance. Fobbits come in many stripes - not just public affairs spinners but "supply clerks, motor pool mechanics, cooks, mail sorters, lawyers, trombone players, logisticians." The comfort-loving Fobbits are an easy target of ridicule for a combat soldier, but they shouldn't be the object of the reader's scorn. After all, they volunteered to wear the uniform. Less than 2 percent of eligible Americans do. Abrams makes some beginner's errors: the dialogue is occasionally stilted, and I wish he spent more time with the actual Fobbits instead of the infantryman Capt. Abe Shrinkle, whose incompetence makes Gooding's job more challenging. At the start of the book, there is a joke about the illicit relationship between a couple of young enlistees, Simon and Allison. It's funny - but it also gets at the intimacy of war, the primordial connection, the need for human contact in the face of death. "Fobbit" could have done with more of this. But this is a minor complaint, and in fact I applaud David Abrams for sticking to his vision and writing the satire he wanted to write instead of adding to the crowded shelf of war memoirs. In "Fobbit," he has written a very funny book, as funny, disturbing, heartbreaking and ridiculous as war itself. Christian Bauman served with the United States Army in Somalia and Haiti. The most recent of his three novels is "In Hoboken."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 30, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
In west Baghdad, while the infantry fights the war on terrorism, a team of public affairs soldiers play computer solitaire and clip toenails in the relative safety of the Forward Operating Base (FOB), waiting for the latest death reports. This is the story of the Fobbits, as they're pejoratively called, and, in particular, Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding Jr., who types up the latest suicide bombing into something palatable for Americans digesting his words over breakfast. It's the story of Lieutenant Colonel Vic Duret, knee-deep in the heat, stench, and gore of combat instead of working on nation rebuilding, who hates those Fobbits in their cushy cubicles avoiding combat. It's the story of incompetent Captain Abe Shrinkle, who has something to prove and becomes a burr in the boot of the U.S. Army. First-novelist Abrams punches up the grittiness of war with the dark, cynical humor that comes from living it (he served as a Fobbit in Iraq), crafting images that will haunt readers long after they pry their grip from the book. Think M.A.S.H. in Iraq.--Holcomb, Diane Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Abrams's debut is a harrowing satire of the Iraq War and an instant classic. The Fobbits of the title are U.S. Army support personnel, stationed at Baghdad's enclave of desk jobs: Forward Operating Base Triumph. Some of the soldiers, like Lt. Col. Vic Duret, are good officers pushed to the brink. Others, like Capt. Abe Shrinkle, are indecisive blowhards. But the soul of the book is Staff Sgt. Chance Gooding Jr., a public relations NCO who spends his days crafting excruciating press releases and fending off a growing sense of moral bankruptcy. A series of bombings, street battles, and media debacles test all of these men and, although there are exciting combat scenes, the book's most riveting moments are about crafting spin, putting the "Iraqi Face" on the conflict. A sequence in which a press release is drafted and edited and scrutinized, held up for so long that its eventual release is old news, is a pointed vision of losing a public relations war. Abrams, a 20-year Army veteran who served with a public affairs team in Iraq, brings great authority and verisimilitude to his depictions of these attempts to shape the perceptions of the conflict. Abrams's prose is spot-on and often deadpan funny, as when referring to the "warm pennies" smell of a soldier's "undermusk of blood," or when describing one misshapen officer: "skull too big for the stalk of his neck, arms foreshortened like a dinosaur... one word came to mind: thalidomide." This novel nails the comedy and the pathos, the boredom and the dread, crafting the Iraq War's answer to Catch-22. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Former army journalist Abrams offers a comic novel about press officers, clerks, and all noncombat military personnel at a Forward Operating Base (FOB) during the peak of violence in U.S.-occupied Iraq. Staff Sgt. Chance Gooding-while counting the days until his deployment ends-methodically translates combat reports and suicide bomber fatalities into bloodless press-release prose. After several fatal incidents of incompetance, Capt. Abe Shrinkle is transferred in disgrace from leading troops, and exiled to folding towels in the FOB gym. From there, his humiliating downward spiral is unstoppable and ends scandalously in the Australians' off-limits swimming pool. Abrams (with a nod to Catch-22) mocks the cliches of military bureaucracy, yet he frequently employs military jargon and expressions to describe the characters' thoughts and schemes for self-preservation. While the author paints with broad satirical strokes, the book offers a unique behind-the-wire glimpse at life at the FOB and the process of "spinning" a war for public consumption. VERDICT A funny, hard-edged satire about recent history and modern war-making, suitable for adult general fiction readers. [See Prepub Alert, 4/19/12.]-John Cecil, Austin, TX (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
IEDs, VBIEDs, EODs, G-3 and even CNN contrive a constant Catch-22 as Fobbit Chance Gooding Jr. fights the acronym war in Abrams' debut novel. FOB is an acronym, meaning Forward Operating Base. It's 2005 in war-torn Iraq, and a Fobbit is a soldier working within that secured area, never venturing beyond the wire and guard towers to cope with AK-47toting terrorists and improvised explosive devices. Staff Sgt. Gooding mans a computer in FOB Triumph's Public Affairs Office. Though he uses no active unit's designation, the author knows the Army, good and bad. Abrams is a 20-year veteran who served in Iraq as part of a public affairs team. While the narrative generally feeds off Gooding, it is peopled with far more outlandish and intriguing characters. One is Gooding's immediate superior, Lt. Col. Eustace Harkleroad, timid, overweight, incompetent and subject to stress nosebleeds. Bunkered in a cubicle in one of Saddam's old palaces, Gooding shoots off clich-riddled press releases meant to obscure casualty numbers. The doublespeak must earn three chain-of-command initials before they're ready to be ignored by the media. The tipping point comes when news outlets begin to salivate over killed-in-action numbers reaching 2,000. With notations from Gooding's diary and woeful, lie-laden emails-to-mother from Harkleroad, the author's narrative reflects the Fobbit war, the heat and the sand, civilian contractors and guest workers at the FOB's burger and chicken franchises. Abrams saves his best work for two supporting characters, Lt. Col. Vic Duret, a hard-driving, stressed-out, uber-responsible battalion commander haunted by his brother-in-law's death in the World Trade Center attack, and the inept and fear-filled Capt. Abe Shrinkle, a West Pointer who bungles his way into shooting an innocent Iraqi civilian on one mission and incinerating another on the next. More a Fobbit's Jarhead than a Yossarian Catch-22, although one character meets a Kid Sampson-like fate. Sardonic and poignant. Funny and bitter. Ribald and profane. Confirmation for the anti-war crowd and bile for Bush supporters.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
