The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien. Penguin Books, $12.95 (251pp) ISBN 978-0-14-014773-5

Weapons and good-luck charms carried by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam here represent survival, lost innocence and the war's interminable legacy. ``O'Brien's meditations--on war and memory, on darkness and light--suffuse the entire work with a kind of poetic form, making for a highly original, fully realized novel,'' said PW. 60,000 first printing. (Apr.)

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