I’ve had this collection of stories for an embarrassingly long time, long enough that I don’t even want to admit how long. Let’s just say it was well before their eventual publication (thanks, Netgalley, and sorry for being such a deliquent!).

Will Mackin’s Bring Out the Dog is a collection of stories that depicts the absurdity and tragedy of modern warfare. The stories aren’t particularly gruesome, and there’s little in the way of the overt masculinity I associate with a Hollywood blockbuster depiction of war. Stories of war can easily translate to grandiose adventures and great acts of heroism. Thankfully, this is not that story, and despite it’s grim subject, it’s a humane collection – gritty and honest – laced with just the right amount of dark humor and boredom. I enjoyed it very much.

Highlight include “Crossing the River with No Name”, the story of a man who has already used his miracles, “The Lost Troop” (from which the paragraph above is taken), a story of a troop revisiting their interpreter’s petty childhood teacher, and “Great Circle Route Westward Through Perpetual Night”, which is the story of the death of the troop’s dog.

I picked this up based on the striking cover and the even more striking George Saunders recommendations. I was not disappointed. If you’re interested in the modern American experience in war but don’t know where to start, this is an excellent place to begin.

Published by Random House on March 6, 2018

Bring Out the Dog is an uneven collection of war stories told by the same narrator and generally featuring the same characters. Some stories take place while the combatants are training; others take place in Iraq or Afghanistan. My impression is that Will Mackin followed the model of other war writers without reflecting deeply on his own experiences, or at least without translating that reflection into soul-searching fiction.

It is a staple of war fiction that fighters in the field believe they know more than commanders who occupy desks. When Mackin writes, “As Seal Team Six . . . [o]ur ideas about the war were the war,” his narrator’s hubris reflects a common mindset in war fiction. The best war stories, as exemplified by The Things They Carried, explore the strengths and weaknesses of combatants and the horror of war without being self-aggrandizing. Macen occasionally reaches that pinnacle, but many of the stories in Bring Out the Dog fall short. Too many strained similes (“Static poured out of its speaker like sugar”) come across as ill-advised attempts to be literary. At his best, Mackin tells his stories in a natural voice. At his worst, he’s pretentious.

The best story, “The Great Circle Route Westward Through Perpetual Night,” is about a dog’s funeral, but it is also about two enduring themes of war fiction: fear and futility. Another story that gains strength from its honesty, “Rib Night,” talks about soldiers who become addicted to sleeping pills so they can forget about the people they killed. One soldier in particular makes a point of being a testosterone-driven asshole who clearly joined the service so that he could kill people. He takes the pills for fun and doesn’t seem interested in forgetting the deaths he caused.

One of the better stories isn’t really a war story at all, although it might explain something about the mindset that drives men to volunteer for combat. “Baker’s Strong Point” deals with the narrator’s friend, who hangs out with a stripper when he and the narrator aren’t practicing their skills in the Utah desert. The stripper’s unfortunate boyfriend has an encounter with the soldier and his baseball bat when he wonders whether the stripper might be cheating on him.

Many of Mackin’s themes are common in war fiction, including the boredom that combatants share when they aren’t in combat. “The Lost Troop” is about the things a bored soldier imagines (the war is over and nobody told them, an asteroid is about to wipe out all life on the planet) before he and his troop find a spot to scatter the ashes of a soldier who died. To cope with boredom, the troop pays a visit to their interpreter’s mean grade school teacher and recites the lyrics of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, an act that hardly seems destined to win the hearts and minds of Afghanis. The story is probably the most creative effort in the collection.

On the other hand, boredom is never something that a writer should inflict on a reader. “Welcome Man Will Never Fly” starts out with a former pilot and current Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) who is training a SEAL to be a JTAC, a job the SEAL is clearly incapable of learning. If the story has a point, I missed it. I finished “Kattekoppen,” about a rescue mission for kidnapped soldiers that focuses on whether a Dutch soldier will “fit in,” with a similar sense that I had read a collection of events and thoughts in search of a unifying purpose.

Other stories that didn’t do much for me essentially focused on the rituals of combat without providing any unusual insight into the characters’ lives or the lives of those with whom they interacted. One story involved bombing a fire truck on the practice range, and its only point seemed to be that a fire truck is an odd choice of targets. “Crossing the River No Name” muddles up the usual memes of war fiction (religion, football, camaraderie, risk) but the memes never add up to a coherent point.

“Remain Over Day” is mostly about bickering. “Yankee Two” is about bickering between soldiers who debate their failure to kill a twelve-year-old, apparently accepting as a given that nobody should feel bad about killing a twelve-year-old. “Backmask” explains that the code word for women is “feathers” because, I guess, calling them women would be recognizing that they are human beings — a thought that could have been profitably explored, but the story is mostly about breaking down doors and conversing with wild dogs.

In the end, a few of the stories in this collection show promise, but most come across as “I have war experience so I should write war fiction, even if I don’t know what I want to say.”

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Will Macklin can really write. His disquieting collection of short stories draws from his time as a special operations soldier in Iran and Afghanistan. Some soldiers come home and go crazy, if they aren’t already; this one came home to write. Thanks go to Random House and Net Galley for the DRC.

The skill level that is shown in these eleven stories, from setting, to pacing, to character, is tremendous. That said, I found it hard to read. Given the subject matter, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it rattled my cage more than most; then too, the opening story involves deliberately blowing up the home of a teacher that one of the local allies disliked, and I suspect that other teachers are going to have a tough time with that one, too. I set the collection aside to shake off my dislike, and then plunged in again. To be fair, there isn’t one of these tales that is designed to be a feel-good read. They’re all intended to move readers out of their comfort zones, and the author succeeds richly for this reviewer.

I am not a fan of ambiguous endings, and all of these stories conclude that way, which is where the single star fell off my rating.

The most impressive addition is “Kattekoppen”, and after I noted this, I discovered that it was included in a best short story collection.

Macklin is a writer to watch. This collection is recommended to those that like war stories.

I just couldn't get into these stories though that may be more my fault than the stories. I think perhaps the stories will appeal more to a male audience, especially those men who have been in the military and can relate to the subjects.

From every war comes art inspired by that war. The pressures and pains of conflict have proven fertile ground for creators since the days of ancient Greece and Homer’s “Iliad.” There’s loads of room for disparate feelings and emotions - hurt, heart, humor, hubris and much more – in tales from the battlefield.

America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are no different; some remarkable art has sprung from those fallow fields. Music, movies, literature – all have found ways to reflect the people, places and ideas of our country’s lengthy hitch in the Middle East.

With his debut collection “Bring Out the Dog” (Random House, $27), Will Mackin has produced something that holds up alongside the very best war literature of the 21st century. These remarkable stories – 11 in all – are inspired by Mackin’s time deployed with a special ops task force in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They began life as notes jotted down on torn-off flaps of cardboard boxes or even on his own forearm. From there, these thoughts and observations made their way into Mackin’s journals. And those journals served as the foundational material to build this book.

These stories are powerful portraits of men at war, capturing the desperate passion and brutal absurdity of the battlefield. They are filled with grit and honesty, unflinching in their warts-and-all approach to narrative. These tales crackle with an energetic truth that is enthralling and occasionally jaw-dropping.

Every single one of these stories sings; I’ve got my personal highlights, but your mileage may vary. One that might get overlooked is “Rib Night,” which digs deep into some of the personal pressures these soldiers face and how they alleviate them, whether it be through fistfights or fistfuls of pills. It is deeply personal while presenting truths that feel universal. But in truth, they’re all excellent; “Welcome Man Will Never Fly,” “Baker’s Strong Point” “Crossing the River With No Name” are pieces that I loved, but every story – really, every SENTENCE - is impressive and impactful.

My favorite – the one that gets my vote as best of the bunch – is “Great Circle Route Westward Through Perpetual Night,” a tale that begins with a literal rain of s—t and treads through the fallout following the death of the team’s beloved dog at the hands of one of their own. It’s a meditation on the many forms that grief can take and the many causes it can have. It encapsulates beautifully the combination of pathos and dark humor that flows through every one of these exquisite 11.

From the book’s introductory story - “The Lost Troop,” Mackin’s well-placed choice to bring us into his world that features a group of soldiers undertaking an unexpected mission on behalf of an unexpected comrade – to its finale, the tense and complex “Backmask,” where a soldier searches for answers while flooded by thoughts of Kipling and Led Zeppelin, “Bring Out the Dog” is relentless, constructing a propulsive and powerful glimpse into a war-torn world many of us simply do not understand.

These wars have become situations largely lacking in black and white. The gray areas have grown large, casting shadows of uncertainty. Through Mackin’s words, we see circumstances where concepts like success and failure are fluid, with seemingly dichotomous notions like tragedy and triumph instead containing elements of one another.

War lends itself to grand, epic narratives. Creating tales to match that scale is important; our art should reflect the scope of that experience. But of equal importance are stories like those that Mackin is telling, stories built around the individual experience of soldiers on the front. Showing what it really means to be one person in the midst of this massive mechanism, a cog in the wheels of warfare, can’t be easy, but someone like Mackin – someone who has been that person – is uniquely suited to do so.

“Bring Out the Dog” is both complex and compelling, offering up small glimpses of the surreal alongside moments of heartbreak and of heroism. Mackin’s prose displays a deftness that belies its basic muscularity; it’s an ideal mix in terms of presenting these stories with the ring of genuine truth. Conflicts internal and external alike are brought to bear in ways that break the heart and buoy the spirit – often at the same time.

This is a brilliant debut, a work unafraid to use brute force to evoke an uncommon grace. Mackin’s vision consummately captures the lives of soldiers dealing with the physical and psychological stresses of a seemingly unending war.

Time will tell whether this book finds its spot among the best American creative works born of these wars, but from where I’m sitting, it’ll be awfully difficult to deny “Bring Out the Dog” a place at that table. It is magnificent.

Bring Out the Dog by Will Mackin is a collection of eleven related short stories about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This war, in this time and these places is different yet the same as so many other wars. Mackin tells the stories from a soldier’s viewpoint that can be both harsh and caring. The war is seemingly endless, with multiple deployments that challenge the men who serve. They have grown up in war, putting fellow troops before family and any personal desires they may have once had. Technology has made war more impersonal but also more efficient in routing out targets. It seems the mastery of the technical aspects create more distance between the deployed troops and each country’s inhabitants. Missions succeed or sometimes go in unexpected directions, but the war itself has no boundaries or end. The observations of Mackin are both acute and detailed, as if focusing on the smallest of details will provide some answer to surviving and enduring. The perils of these men is only relieved in a brief moments of fellowship, memory, raw humor or even a brief consideration of the unforgiving landscape around them. Recommended.

Will Mackin's debut collection of eleven short stories about the soldier's experience in Afghanistan and between missions too. Most of the stories are relatively short and often are left open ended. But we are the toll that these tours take on the men and the stories are not for the faint of heart. I look forward to what other writing the author will put out into the literary sphere.

This book’s summary caught my attention as my son recently spent several months in Afghanistan. As suspected, Will’s moving collection of stories based in part on notes written on his arm and incorporated into a journal felt more personal. His observations and details especially related to boots on the ground stuff in the company of other soldiers during deployment were the most powerful and engaging.
Will post in additional online venues once book is published.

Look, I'll say it; we are close to SEAL burnout. I was hesitant to read another book abut the super warriors, and they are but too much of anything is not good.

STOP; this was not the rehash we have come to expect since the heights of books like "fearless" or "No easy day". Great job of writing here, Macklin does himself and his warrior clan proud

I first came across Mackin's writing through the New Yorker, which published his vivid, lyrical essay "Crossing The River No Name." This collection, which includes the piece that first drew me into Mackin's writing, is a series of related short stories about a Navy SEAL's deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mackin's writing is crisp, clear, and pulls no punches in his personal account of war.

Some of it is pretty fucked up; there is no fog of war here. The stories depict the harassment and detention of children; the emotional pain of mothers and wives; boredom alleviated by concocting missions against innocent old foes; and of course a surplus of death and destruction. But it is all told in a truthful, unflinching way, like Mackin is telling us, "this is fiction, yes, but this is what really happened out there."

Mackin is a master storyteller and the detail of these essays is just brilliant. 5/5 stars.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing an advance reading copy.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

This book did something rare for me: I was really excited to read it, and still just as happy after I finished. Hype usually kills a book for me because it's hard to live up to expectations.

I first encountered Mackin's writing when I read Crossing the River No Name in The New Yorker. After enjoying another of his stories in the New Yorker, I knew I had to read more. Not every clears the high bar set by No Name. That story has it all. It's literary, raw, paced just right. But even when a story doesn't quite live up to that standard, nothing in this book misses the mark.

Mackin writes about war in a way that feels intimate, raw, funny, and tragic. His prose is a delight to read. The sensory detail is great, and I particularly love the scenes he describes through the lens of his night-vision goggles.

Whether you usually pick up short story collections (or war stories, for that matter) or not, this is one I definitely recommend.

This collection of short snapshots into the lives of soldiers is beautifully written. The topics covered are by no means beautiful - the futility of war, the pain of taking human lives, the fear of the unknown - it's all heavy stuff, but it's written in a striking, literary way that few war stories are. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien certainly comes to mind, but this collection's focus on Iraq and Afghanistan give it a more contemporary feel (different war, same horrors). As a civilian reader, I did feel a little disconnected from some of the military lingo, but not enough to disconnect me from the stories themselves. I imagine someone who has been through similar wartime experiences will appreciate those scattered "insider" tidbits.