Matterhorn Audiobook By Karl Marlantes cover art

Matterhorn

A Novel of the Vietnam War

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Matterhorn

By: Karl Marlantes
Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
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An incredible publishing story—written over the course of thirty years by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, a New York Times bestseller for sixteen weeks, a National Indie Next, and a USA Today bestseller—Matterhorn has been hailed as a "brilliant account of war" (New York Times Book Review).

Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and James Jones' The Thin Red Line. It is the timeless story of a young marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.

Matterhorn is a visceral and spellbinding novel about what it is like to be a young man at war. It is an unforgettable story that transforms the tragedy of Vietnam into a powerful and universal story of courage, camaraderie, and sacrifice—a parable not only of the war in Vietnam but of all war, and a testament to the redemptive power of literature.

A bonus PDF is included, with maps, a Chain of Command hierarchy, a glossary, and other interesting facts and information.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Download the accompanying reference guide.©2010 Karl Marlantes (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Veteran Creators War & Military Historical Fiction War Military Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Heartfelt Inspiring Vietnam War Fiction
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Critic reviews

Matterhorn is one of the most powerful and moving novels about combat, the Vietnam War, and war in general that I have ever read.” (Dan Rather)
“Brings a long, torturous war back to life with realistic characters and authentic, thrilling combat sequences.” ( Publishers Weekly)
“Unforgettable.… A beautifully crafted novel of unrivaled authenticity and power, filled with jungle heroism, crackerjack inventiveness, mud, blood, brotherhood, hatred, healing, terror, bureaucracy, politics, unfathomable waste, and unfathomable love." (Christina Robb, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist)
Authentic Portrayal • Complex Characters • Exceptional Voice Versatility • Immersive Experience • Emotional Impact

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This book is unique in that it lists all the awful day-to-day suffering of a Marine besides fighting the enemy that NO ONE ever put into the movies! It reads like a journal. It is engrossing.

This author lets you feel the suffering and you listen in awe of the heroic feats (like marching in full gear without any food for days) and proud of the soldiers who managed to just live, much less fight, under the worst possible conditions.

Unglamorous but no less worthy of mention are all the things you didn't realize were such scourge such as: a constant struggle against leeches, wearing filthy clothes for weeks, foot rot & ringworm that often bordered often on gangrenous limbs, racial bigotry within units (destroyed is the myth that Vietnam era soldiers all got along fine and were past any bigotry due to the "peace & love" movement), "career officer" making bad decisions just to impress their superiors, battle body counts that were fudged just to look good to whoever needed those numbers.

Also noted is how the new and constant use of RADIO from the central command post to field soldiers led to a *terrible disconnect* freeing those issuing absurd orders from feeling the devastating effects on the men who executed those orders.

This book nicely avoids many of true but horrid cliches that we've ALL heard by now such as; "We had to burn the the village to save it."

Obviously this is not the "feel-good" book of the year.

However I am very glad I read this book. I have even greater understanding and respect for the men who, despite nearly constant suffering, (BESIDES the awful direct combat) the soldiers withstood while fighting in Vietnam.

This audio book is excellently produced & narrated.

and you THOUGHT you knew everything about Vietnam

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I am going to have to change the answer to all my favorite book password questions to "Matterhorn." Its well-drawn characters, compelling subject and powerful storyline are a stunning achievement from a new author. Its definitely worth a credit, maybe even two and the 21 hours of listening. Even before it was over, I went looking for another by the same author. The narrator may be the best I have ever heard and I have listened to well over 100 audibooks.
Listen to this book!

Awesome Book

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This is a great novel, deserving of the praise it has gotten from respected book reviewers and much more deserving than most to be on the bestseller lists. It is also well-narrated, even the narrators efforts to imitate one accent or another is not annoying at all. I am not going to say that the book doesn't have some slow spots, or a few predictable plot twists, but you can overlook that in the sweep of a story of Vietnam, a very human and believable story centering on a single lieutenant and his Marine unit working near the DMZ and the Laotian border. But this is not just a book about Vietnam, it is highly relevant to any war zone. And its power puts to shame such other efforts as the nonfiction book "War" about Afghanistan. Get this book.

a great novel

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This is not intended to be a review in the literary sense of the word. Rather it is a very late effort to exorcise myself of the guilt for an almost complete lack of physical and emotional involvement in the Vietnam War. I wasn't there. Whatever meaning those three accusatory words might carry, it still reeks of the stench of non-involvement. I wasn't there!

Instead, at the height of this senseless massacre, for me about forty-five years ago, I was completing college (ironically on the GI Bill) and moving into a career of teaching. Unable to resume my third year at a small Pennsylvania state teachers college, I had enlisted in the U.S. Navy. To my knowledge, it was the first time that branch of the military had offered a voluntary two year period of service. It was a piece of cake. After boot camp I was assigned to the USS Wisconsin (BB64), appointed as the Executive Officer's Yeoman, and just enjoyed a two-year "shakedown cruise" involving good will visits to more than fifteen countries. No, I wasn't there... there being the real war, not my cruise ship junket on a brand new battleship. The only action I ever saw was at a typewriter. As I said, the GI Bill enabled me to return to college (and even paid for a Master's Degree). But I wasn't there. Youth and the joy of a successful first decade of teaching (1959-1969) blinded me to everything except me, and any time a whiff of Vietnam or the campus protests encroached upon that serenity, "the war" just seemed so far away. No, I wasn't there but here.

Karl Marlantes' MATTERHORN: A NOVEL OF THE VIETNAM WAR, although coming to my attention only in early June 2012, zapped me from a complacency about being "here" for most of the war, and viciously threw me into a shock of recognition ... a shock that leered and hissed my betrayal of any kind of support for a war that America never should have fought. But fight it did, right or wrong ... my country and friends and neighbors, even a brother-in-law shot days before his release ... but I wasn't there in thought, word or deed.

I was doing just fine until I joined Audible. Why I ever chose MATTERHORN, a brilliant first novel thirty-five years in the writing by a scholar who actually fought heroically in the war's darkest days, is beyond me. But, as Marlantes' characters so often muse, "There it is."

By the time I engaged in a final six-hour listening marathon, irresistibly drawn into the diorama of so many men's lives - past, present, and future - I was finally there as much as I ever could be. My six-hundred page exorcism was over. I am scourged, stronger for the sacrifices of the thousand thousands for whom John Donne's bell never tolled in my heart until now. A humble token of my respect and appreciation for the "kids" who fought this insane war is demonstrated in my near reverent Internet searches to gain knowledge, truth, wisdom - the only three solemn and bloodied sisters who are capable of releasing me from the collectively subconscious guilt that the cancer of the Vietnam War produced in most Americans who had a pulse at the time, including the government and the politicians ... especially the politicians. The truth will set you free? Better late than never?

Well, maybe. There it is. But I wasn't there... in thought, word, or deed.

I wasn't there!

I Wasn't There

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The title is a phrase repeated by many of the characters over the course of the novel, and I think sums up rather well the author's approach and the feeling one walks away with at the end of this terrific listen. This story is not a sweeping epic, but a vivid and graphic portrait of a war, which as tragic and awful as we acknowledge it to be, resides in the public consciousness as little more than a series of Hollywood cliches. What you get with Matterhorn is a grizzly, demoralizing slog of an experience plagued with institutional pettiness, ignorance of meddling superiors, and the excruciating knowledge that by and large everyone involved is doing their best.
The author's own experiences appear to have been put to good use, as the story overflows with little technical, environmental and social details that bring the experience to life. Bits like personal items each marine chooses to carry on long marches, the flaws in equipment, and the very tenuous race dynamics of frontline units integrated for less than twenty years and at the height of the civil rights ant anti-war movements back home add authenticity and any number of personal dramas to the overall story.
The performance also contributes to the novel's impact, as each character is given a unique voice that helps ground the listener's awareness of who they are and where they're coming from. The narration itself provides the perfect tone, often bleak and frustrated but at times frantic or even hilarious. Through the eyes of a new platoon leader, the author introduces us to a cast of very memorable stand-ins for thousands of young men sent to fight a war they didn't understand and often made no sense in any event. Through his characters' trials, he gets us to see what he and so many went through, asked to do the impossible for no understandable purpose, over and over again, losing friends and belief along the way. It is a powerful and often embittering journey, one that will leave you appalled at the cost of war, and genuinely appreciative of the ones who endure the sacrifices it requires.

There it is...

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