Stars for EAT THE APPLE

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Matt Young joined the Marine Corps at age eighteen after a drunken night culminating in wrapping his car around a fire hydrant, and deployed to Iraq three times. Now a creative-writing professor at Centralia College, Young shares his experiences through a broad range of narrative approaches (second person, third person, first-person plural, screenplay, crude drawings, invented dialogue between various selves) in his memoir, EAT THE APPLE, which has THREE starred reviews:

“Young’s visceral prose, honed in college and writing programs after his tours of duty, confronts shame, guilt, and pain without flinching yet is beyond sympathetic to its subject; it is another act of service.” — Booklist, starred review

“[A] bold memoir… with raw honesty, humor, and pathos. Comparisons to Michael Herr’s DISPATCHES, about the Vietnam War, are apt, but where Herr searched for thrills and headlines as a journalist, Young writes from a grunt’s perspective that has changed little since Roman legionnaires yawned through night watch on Hadrian’s Wall: endless tedium interrupted by moments of terror and hilarity, all under a strict regime of blind obedience and foolish machismo.” Publishers Weekly, starred review

“This honest war memoir will shock and horrify, will cause readers to tear up, and will make them wish they could tell a 19-year-old marine that everything will be okay. Highly recommended for all collections.” — Library Journal, starred review

“A real war story told in fragments by a gifted young writer trying to come to grips with his experiences.” — Kirkus Reviews

EAT THE APPLE will be available from Bloomsbury Press on February 27, 2018.

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