Stars for EAT THE APPLE

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.