Reviews for The Gypsy Game/The Trumpeter of Krakow

The average rating for The Gypsy Game/The Trumpeter of Krakow based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-12-11 00:00:00 K E Baxter The Things They Carried 4 stars This is a collection of connected short stories dealing with one platoons experience of the Vietnam war. The book has dark humour, tragedy, love, death and of course the horror of war. What struck me most was this is a story of ordinary men, not heroes, just men doing the best with what they have been given, the attack the enemy with anger they destroy villages in revenge, they are not a peaceful force with the natives best interest at heart and that makes it more real for me, they are childish and petty, they fight with each other and play they are humans we can all relate to. The language used is precise and I dont think we will ever truly know what the real elements of truth in the stories are what are embellishments. This deserves it place on the 1001 list for making war and soldiers human, its easy to distance ourselves and put it out of our minds but the author brings war hurtling into our quiet content war and gives us a true view of the horror and humanity.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-01-15 00:00:00 Jennifer Anne Murphy By far, ironically, one of the most cruel, violent and beautiful books I have read in a long time. The book is a story of soldiers fighting in the way and the things they saw, dealt with and the trauma they had to "carry" throughout the rest of their life. The simply things from the description of his friend stepping on a landmine to the cruel murder of the water buffalo made this story in it's own category. So well written you have to turn away from the story at times the way you do to not see the gore in a film. One of the best pulpy novels on the cruelty of war not on the soil and citiizens its faught but on the soldiers fighting it for us.