Eat the Apple review: Matt Young's memoir about the paradoxes of going to war
Eat the Apple
Matt Young
Eat the Apple. By Matt Young.
Photo: SuppliedBloomsbury, $24.99
The title, which comes from a US marine saying "Eat the Apple. F--- the Corps", hints at the style of Matt Young's memoir about marine life. Or styles: one moment sounding like Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five, another like Charles Bukowski on a bad trip during a war. Young, who joined the marines after a drunken, youthful drive led to a run-in with a fire hydrant, addresses himself as "you" and "recruit Young" as a way of getting detachment from himself, but also as a way of reflecting the dehumanising nature of marine training. His war – three tours of Iraq – is brutal: bombs, bodies and twisted Humvees, but also absurdist in its descriptions of DIY sex-aids and masturbation on the front line. Sometimes the writing strains for effect, but it's powerfully frank and alive to the paradoxes of fearing war and itching for it.