Once again Theodore Weesner displays his genius for giving voice to the forgotten and inarticulate. Though its form, like that of THE CAR THIEF, is the bildungsroman, and the setting a tank company during the first Gulf War, CARRYING is a prickly and provocative meditation on racism and the limits of American innocence. At the heart of the novel there's a disturbing insecurity born of solitude and fear which can be overcome only by love or violence (or perhaps both). Our naive narrator's anticipation of the war–which pointedly began on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday–harkens back to Henry Fleming's in THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, while his struggle with race recalls Robert O'Connor's BUFFALO SOLDIERS.–Stewart O'Nan
