Fifteen Days - Christie Blatchford

This was a book I kept picking up at work, reading the back, talking about it with different people...I don't know what took me so long to read it but I finally brought it home and was transformed.  Moving, intense, enlightening, so, so vivid...a book of many wonders.

Its hard to get a clear picture of what is going on in this war, what has gone on, why we're there, what we're doing.  The day-to-day lives of Canadian soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan seem to be a mystery to the general public (myself included, obviously).  I think this is partly due to the inability of the media to capture something so broad in a 3-5 minute segment on the evening news; the difficulty in saying everything one might want to in a newspaper article that has to take up exactly three-quarters of a page....I can see how it's hard.

This novel is able to give scope and depth to the war, to the soldiers, to Canada's role in the whole thing.  It is told in segments detailing fifteen days that all represented in Ms Blatchford's opinion/experience some kind of turning point or momentous event in the war to that point.  Together the stories form a complete picture I feel is somehow lacking in our collective Canadian consciousness, a picture of what we have accomplished so far in that godforsaken desert - and what it has cost us.

I was seriously impressed by the authour herself.  I could tell as soon as I started reading the acknowledgements in the front of the book I was going to love her voice (plus she seems to swear as much as I do, which is awesome).  She does not pull punches, does not lack in empathy, does not flinch in the telling.

This book wrecked me. This book enlightened me. This book made me rethink war, Canada, peace. Soldiers.  It made my heart pound while I followed the soldiers through firefights in my mind, and almost every  chapter left me teared up (and I'm really no pansy).  It has won a Governor General's award - so I'm not the only one who has some serious respect for this achievement of a novel.

Side Note -- I really feel this should become part of the high school curriculum.  When you learn about the big wars of the last century in high school, the majority of material available refers mainly to the US and British roles, which is a shame.  Books like this can prevent it happening now.  This is a perfect compilation of Canadian success and loss to bring home the realities of this war when we teach future generations about it.

Side Side Note -- I would also love to see this as a play.  It would translate amazingly well to the stage and it would reach a wide audience.  This would be a perfect project for the Canadian Stage Company.