Cherry

This memoir was gritty, hard-hitting, and brutally honest. It described addiction and PTSD bluntly. However, I feel like the parts outside of the section about being in Iraq were extremely repetitive. Self loathing, shooting up, trying to get drugs, getting ripped off. It felt monotonous after a while. Overall worth a read though.

Author Nico Walker grew up the son of affluent parents in Ohio, spent 11 months in Iraq pulling in more than 200 missions as a woefully under-qualified Army medic and returned to develop a heroin addiction which led to a string of 11 bank robberies in a 4 month span, stealing about $40K to feed the habit before inevitably being caught. He's currently spending 11 years at the Federal Correctional institution in Ashland Kentucky where he wrote Cherry. And despite the author's note proceeding the work - “This book is a work of fiction. These things didn't ever happen. These people didn't ever exist.” - the story is pretty much that.

But damn what a read. I think critic Ron Charles put it best when he calls Cherry a morose Holden Caulfield goes to war. Walker is matter of fact, adopting a simple street argot but not in a boastful way, trying to show off his cred. The story is not a metaphor, Walker's not angling for your sympathies, he's not looking to redeem himself in your eyes. There's nary a whiff of an MFA program, juggling intent. He's a walking shrug emoji noting the blunt, blood-used and crooked needles in the cupboard, the quiet joke of robbing a bank, the whole make-believe mess of the war. I really enjoyed the read and really settled into Walker's distinct voice - and maybe I'm just taken in by the lived experience on display here, the story that fuels the story adding to the weight of the thing. In contrast to the novel, Walker's Acknowledgements are an effusive read, crediting the people around him for any semblance of talent on display here which just adds to the allure.

The book has sold in several languages already and Walker's using the money to pay back some of the banks he's robbed. They're already working on a movie deal but it's currently held up because he's used up all his phone time in prison. At a meta level it's just such a beautifully crafted package.

I've read war novels that I've liked. I've read junkie novels that I've liked. Though this book combines the two, I did not like it. There was no real story here, no lessons learned, no new direction for the first-person narrator. That this is also autofiction doesn't redeem it. The only thing that keeps you reading is the hope that he'll go to jail or wise up. The best part of this book was reading about areas of Cleveland with which I am familiar.