Another Time by Joseph Hullett
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Realistic Fiction
“Are we captains of our souls? Absolutely. But masters of our fate is stretching it. The harbor we reach is sometimes a long haul from the course we plotted, because storms, and doldrums, and monsters intervene. Ask Odysseus.”
Marlow is an old Vietnam vet, the VA hospital where he was treated after the war has just been torn down and Marlow has travelled 4 hours to see it. Now he is drinking in a bar, telling the young bartender all his memories and stories he was told as a bartender himself before he makes the bus ride home.
“Turns out, that talking-ass, other-timer had my number. I’ve remembered his stories for thirty years now.”
“Me remembering thirty years later that old madman remembering people from his own way-back-when feels full-on weird. I see myself seeing him see them, and it’s like I’m looking in a mirror reflecting a mirror.”
A good idea in theory however the execution was lacking for me. A Vietnam vet going through his memories is good however it was very confusing for me half the time. It seemed disjointed. Each chapter was a different story however there was no context around it. I feel that the author was trying to create the vision of what an unstable mind ravaged by PTSD looks like but I just couldn’t follow it. But maybe that was the point. There is potential in the bones of the story, it’s a short book so there was room for more to fill in the missing blanks. This was an okay book but not for me. I think that it is one of those stories you have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy, not just an anytime book.
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