Book Review: The Human War by Noah Cicero

I read The Human War by Noah Cicero today.
I really enjoyed it.
I could write the whole review in the same style as the book.
But I won't.
That would be lame.

The first of Noah Cicero's works I read were the e-books he had on bearparade.com. I like them a lot so I decided to get one of this books.

I ordered The Human War from a local book store. When I picked it up, the woman at the counter was really amused by the "about the author" on the back. She also said she really liked the cover art. The cover art is pretty cool.

The Human War is a novella plus two short stories, "The Doomed" and "Little Flowers". The titular novella is about a 22 year old man in Youngstown on the day the Iraq War began. He has sex, hangs out at Denny's, goes to a strip club and gets drunk. It's interesting to read about this day from this perspective. I was in middle school when that war started. Mark, the protagonist, is trying to cope with his own feelings of powerlessness and his inability to make sense of the things far beyond his control. He talks with several people. Most either against or ambivalent about the war, though at least one unambiguously for it. It doesn't matter though. Nothing they say or do will have any effect.

Both the short stories continue on similar themes. Feeling powerless and insignificant, misanthropy and the things people do to cope with these feelings.

The style of the writing makes the novella and stories look like long poems. They all feel very frantic and fast paced, despite little actually happening. There were some very funny moments in them too. My personal favorite parts were probably the opening and closing lines of The Human War.

I will be picking up more of Noah Cicero's work in the near future.

Buy The Human War by Noah Cicero here.