Fans of the late Patrick O’Brian (whom I admire above all others) who miss his tales of men at arms should take a look at a new novel by Steven Pressfield called Killing Rommel. No, the novel doesn’t take place on the high seas, but on the great sand sea of the North Africa desert, and no, it is not a story of British sailors facing the forces of Napoleon, but of British soldiers facing Hitler’s Afrika Corps. But Pressfield’s book is like O’Brian’s, in that he gives the reader an excellent idea of the real lives of these men–their exertions, their privations, their disappointments, their victories. And like O’Brian, Pressfield knows how to write action–the battle scenes here are very well done. But perhaps the most apt part of the comparison is that Pressfield, like O’Brian, tells the story he wants to tell. He doesn’t chain himself to some thriller format that requires that all cliches be invoked. Characters pop up and disappear, conflict is sometimes sidestepped, expectations are ignored. The result is a book with its own rhythm, its own texture, its own veracity, its own place in your memory.
Jamie- this is a comment left by Ken Smith