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Fives and Twenty-Fives

Review

Fives and Twenty-Fives

“In tribal societies, warriors fight in full view of their families. When a warrior kills, his mother watches him do it. There are no mysteries, no secrets. In modern war, nations dress their sons and daughters in elaborate costumes, and send them to the other side of the world to witness and, at times, commit horrifying acts of violence on an industrial scale. When a soldier comes home, his mother has no idea what he’s done.”

It’s unusual, though not completely rare, for a writer to describe his or her inspiration to the reader of a novel. However, this passage from a letter to his readers at the beginning of FIVES AND TWENTY-FIVES shows that Michael Pitre has not written just another war novel. A former marine and two-time Iraq War veteran, Pitre uses the pothole-filling, bomb-defusing duty of marines to explore the audacities and realities of life during wartime.

"Pitre’s first novel gives us a straight-shooting insight into the very real and disturbing ways in which these brave souls have to find grace under pressure, at home and abroad."

"Five and twenty-fives” represents the protocol that marines follow when they are out on patrol. The Road Repair Platoon, particularly here on the Al Anbar Province highway system, requires marines to stay in their vehicle, scan the ground for five meters in every direction, dismount if all is well, and search the desert by walking across it. Then they must sweep 25 meters in every direction, because if something is detonated in that area, everyone on the ground will be killed. It is a horrifically dangerous and monotonous job, and Pitre uses it to show the futility and absurdity of war in general, the Iraq War in particular. As a veteran, we must believe what he says. As a writer, we are engaged in the simple language that allows us to experience the horrors before him and his comrades in a visceral and emotional manner. This is what makes a good war novel, and Pitre has done just that.

Donovan is the man we follow, a lieutenant who is the son of an Alabaman high school coach. He is a reluctant but proficient leader. His Cajun corpsman, Doc Pleasant, finds great purpose in what they do, but finds the constant draining emotions of watching those you care about disappear in a flash of light and fire to be a difficult process. Then there’s Dodge, an Iraqi national who is working with the Americans and loves Mark Twain, among many other iconic American writers and ideals. All of them survive the day-in and day-out of death and destruction they have been sent there to endure, but life back on American soil is a far more difficult experience than any of them had reason to believe it would be.

This is a hard book to read. I find the plight of returning soldiers particularly difficult as subject material. We value their service and want them to return to a home where all their fears can be allayed, and they can have some solace after their lives have been so despicably interrupted by the wages of war. But we cannot understand their plight because we have not lived it ourselves. FIVES AND TWENTY-FIVES gives us a peek into the ways in which these returning soldiers suffer and gives each reader a greater degree of empathy than perhaps we would have had before, if not faced with our own loved ones’ return from battle.

The book is told by all of these men, and for a debut novelist, Pitre manages to move among their distinctive voices with a facility befitting a more experienced writer. Pitre began writing the story when he came home in 2011, plagued by sleepless nights and the endless memories of military life and strife. Art manages to do for him what so many other things could not, helping him organize his memories and dealing with them at the same time. He finds compelling voices for all of his characters, especially Dodge, the son of a former ally of Saddam Hussein; it is fascinating to see our culture through the eyes of someone who very easily could have been just our “enemy.” I could have used more of Sgt. Michelle Gomez, the lone female voice amongst these brave soldiers. If Pitre wanted us to have a well-rounded look at the horrors of war and the experiences of a wide group of people, Gomez would have spoken for a highly underrepresented part of any corps.

FIVES AND TWENTY-FIVES uses the stories of these men and women to explore the multi-dimensional nightmare that the Iraq War (and war in general) has brought to fruition. Often, war books are about the insanity and inanity of war, but few touch on the aftermath of these plights. Pitre’s first novel gives us a straight-shooting insight into the very real and disturbing ways in which these brave souls have to find grace under pressure, at home and abroad.

Reviewed by Jana Siciliano on October 3, 2014

Fives and Twenty-Fives
by Michael Pitre

  • Publication Date: August 26, 2014
  • Genres: Fiction
  • Hardcover: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
  • ISBN-10: 162040754X
  • ISBN-13: 9781620407547