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My Life as a Foreign Country: A Memoir Hardcover – September 15, 2014
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“My Life as a Foreign Country is brilliant and beautiful. It surely ranks with the best war memoirs I've ever encountered—a humane, heartbreaking, and expertly crafted work of literature.” (Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried)
“In Brian Turner's extraordinarily capable hands, language is war's undoing, in the sense that his words won't allow absurdity and terror to be anything less than real. My Life as a Foreign Country is lyrical and restless, both ironic and profoundly empathetic.” (Mark Doty, author of Fire to Fire, winner of the National Book Award)
“Brian Turner has given us not so much a memoir as a meditation, rendered with grace and wit and wisdom. If you want to know what modern soldiers see when they look at their world, read this book.” (Larry Heinemann, author of Paco’s Story, winner of the National Book Award)
“Turner's voice is prophetic, an eerie calm in the midst of calamity…Achingly, disturbingly, shockingly beautiful.” (Nick Flynn, author of The Reenactments and The Ticking Is the Bomb)
“Moments of candor and existential longing break open to expose a world of truths…Brian Turner is a born storyteller.” (Yusef Komunyakaa, author of Neon Vernacular, winner of the Pulitzer Prize)
“A brilliant fever dream of war's surreality, its lastingness, its place in families and in the fate of nations. Each sentence has been carefully measured, weighed with loss and vitality, the hard-earned language of a survivor who has seen the world destroyed and written it back to life. This is a profound and beautiful work of art.” (Benjamin Busch, author of Dust to Dust)
“The psychological consequences of war are movingly portrayed… [a] standout.” (Publishers Weekly)
“A book…about the haunted past and a haunted man… A story of working through trauma, but above all it's a book about a man, a country, even a species beleaguered by a terrible attachment to war.” (Tomas Hachard - NPR)
“In Brian Turner's extraordinarily capable hands, language is war's undoing, in the sense that his words won't allow absurdity and terror to be anything less than real. My Life as a Foreign Country is lyrical and restless, both ironic and profoundly empathetic.” (Mark Doty, author of Fire to Fire, winner of the National Book Award)
“Brian Turner has given us not so much a memoir as a meditation, rendered with grace and wit and wisdom. If you want to know what modern soldiers see when they look at their world, read this book.” (Larry Heinemann, author of Paco’s Story, winner of the National Book Award)
“Turner's voice is prophetic, an eerie calm in the midst of calamity…Achingly, disturbingly, shockingly beautiful.” (Nick Flynn, author of The Reenactments and The Ticking Is the Bomb)
“Moments of candor and existential longing break open to expose a world of truths…Brian Turner is a born storyteller.” (Yusef Komunyakaa, author of Neon Vernacular, winner of the Pulitzer Prize)
“A brilliant fever dream of war's surreality, its lastingness, its place in families and in the fate of nations. Each sentence has been carefully measured, weighed with loss and vitality, the hard-earned language of a survivor who has seen the world destroyed and written it back to life. This is a profound and beautiful work of art.” (Benjamin Busch, author of Dust to Dust)
“The psychological consequences of war are movingly portrayed… [a] standout.” (Publishers Weekly)
“A book…about the haunted past and a haunted man… A story of working through trauma, but above all it's a book about a man, a country, even a species beleaguered by a terrible attachment to war.” (Tomas Hachard - NPR)
About the Author
Brian Turner is the director of the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College and the prize-winning author of two poetry collections about his seven years in the United States Army. He lives in Orlando, Florida.
More About the Author
Brian Turner earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and lived abroad in South Korea for a year before serving for seven years in the US Army. He was an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq beginning November 2003, with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Comb
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By
Timothy J. Bazzett
on September 8, 2014
Format: Hardcover
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As horrific, ill-planned and misguided as the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may have been, they have, in spite of themselves, yielded a bumper crop of beautifully written books. Two such books, both memoirs from combat veterans, that immediately come to mind are Benjamin Busch's Dust to Dust: A Memoir and Brian Castner's The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows. To those books I will now add Brian Turner's moving memoir, MY LIFE AS A FOREIGN COUNTRY.
Busch's book moved effortlessly between memories of his combat experiences in Iraq and his childhood. Ironically, of the latter time, the former Marine begins his narrative with, "I was not allowed to have a gun." Later he tells us, "There is something to be said about being dust. It is where we are all headed." There is a telling matter-of-factness in Busch's treatment of death and its inevitability.
Castner, haunted by his harrowing experiences as a bomb disposal specialist with the Air Force, tells us calmly from the outset: "The first thing you should know about me is that I'm crazy."
In his own memoir, Turner tells us: "Sgt. Turner is dead." And he thinks of himself, alternately, as a drone and its operator-pilot, flying over hostile territory, photo-mapping and gathering intelligence.
Death, insanity, and, again, death. These are hardly surprising themes in books that deal with war and its aftermath. Like Busch and Castner before him, Turner maps the landscape of war, both external and internal, assesses the damage, and meditates on its consequences. Words are his medium.Read more ›
Busch's book moved effortlessly between memories of his combat experiences in Iraq and his childhood. Ironically, of the latter time, the former Marine begins his narrative with, "I was not allowed to have a gun." Later he tells us, "There is something to be said about being dust. It is where we are all headed." There is a telling matter-of-factness in Busch's treatment of death and its inevitability.
Castner, haunted by his harrowing experiences as a bomb disposal specialist with the Air Force, tells us calmly from the outset: "The first thing you should know about me is that I'm crazy."
In his own memoir, Turner tells us: "Sgt. Turner is dead." And he thinks of himself, alternately, as a drone and its operator-pilot, flying over hostile territory, photo-mapping and gathering intelligence.
Death, insanity, and, again, death. These are hardly surprising themes in books that deal with war and its aftermath. Like Busch and Castner before him, Turner maps the landscape of war, both external and internal, assesses the damage, and meditates on its consequences. Words are his medium.Read more ›
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By
Brenda Laughlin
on September 9, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition
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Parts of this book were difficult to read as Brian's father is my ex-husband. I knew Brian as a young boy and reading about his experience as a man in the military was extremely interesting. He has enlightened me to the life our men who fought have been sentenced. For many, maybe most, there is no post-war. Their lives and the lives of those who love them are forever changed. A phenomenal book and his writing is thought provoking.
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By
Davey Jones
on September 17, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition
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Turner's memoir in narrative poetry nails a deep dive down into a somber topic: war. Turner's genius manifests in pitting his life against the dramatic scars of his service in the Army's Infantry. Turner talks so much about ghosts and dreams and the lost. But he does so in a way that only cherishes the life of his army fellows. MLFC is a brilliant epic about pursuing life after war and living with a thousand dream spectators who either beckon back to war or a hard quitting.
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