I was so impressed by Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried that I wanted to continue hearing his voice. So I picked up this novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize in the 1970s. The two are definitely different books. Going After Cacciato is quite surreal. It features a group -- squad? platoon? unit? -- who goes after a soldier named Cacciato, who simply ups and leaves the Vietnam War one day, claiming he's going to march to Paris. You'd think that Cacciato would be the main character, but he's not. Instead, it's Paul Berlin, who seems, based on The Things They Carried, to be much more like the author than Cacciato. What ensues is a crazy story of a march through Asia -- or is it a march through the mind? In the end, I enjoyed the book, but it was not nearly as poignant as O'Brien's other, much more famous work. Either way -- war is crazy.
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