PRAISE FOR A HARD AND HEAVY THING

 

Hefti writes with an urgency that demands attention and ultimately breaks the heart. 

-Elliot Ackerman, author of Green on Blue

 

Finally! A war novel that’s less interested in bullets and bombs than it is the complicated inner lives of soldiers. In his brilliantly-observed and exquisitely-paced debut novel, Matthew Hefti has relegated the Iraq War to the background scenery, allowing us to concentrate on the actors standing in front of it. Hefti…makes us feel everything…In the new parade of fiction coming out of our 21st-century wars, Matthew Hefti’s A Hard and Heavy Thing leads from the front. 

-David Abrams, author of New York Times Notable Book Fobbit

A Hard and Heavy Thing is terrific. It is intellectually engaging in a way that almost no other war story can claim, save perhaps Phil Klay’s Redeployment. The tension builds, and as the story goes on, the story-beneath-the-story asserts itself–not unlike with David Foster Wallace’s footnotes–in longer and more muscular asides.

-Adrian Bonenberger, author of Afghan Post  and contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Publisher’s Weekly

A timeless American story from the heartland about two best friends desperately trying to do right when everything in the war is wrong. Hefti’s writing is literary but grounded, and it rings with an honesty that is earnest and smart and sad. This novel is so true to itself it hurts.  

-Brian Castner, author of The Long Walk