This book reminds me of the time when I was a kid and my grandma would leave me for a bit at her friend’s apartment, and she would let me sit in the window with my legs dangling from in between the window’s bars, and from that view at a moderate height above the world, I would loudly proclaim I love that dog! I love the buildings! I love the puddle! I love the trees! I love the cars! I love it!

That’s what it felt like reading this, like discovering that little girl again. And it has been a while since I’ve felt that way. When I first started reading this book, I thought Well? Where are the notes on wonder? This guy is just telling me how much he loves falcons and pants and his children. My bad. I had forgotten what wonder even is. This book reminded it to me.

Maybe the greatest miracle is memory. Think about that this morning, quietly, as you watch the world filter and tremble and beam

This compilation of essays was truly a gift to read. Doyle’s prose is described in the foreword as one that ”made timid readers feel as though they’d been thrown into a kayak and sent careening down a literary equivalent of Idaho’s Payette River during spring runoff”, and it is absolutely correct. Doyle dives headfirst into his ideas, every word a memory, and, just like memories, changing shaping bulging contracting and falling off the face of the earth only to be resurrected once again in a new form. The words go tumbling out of his brain and out of his hands, flipping over and under, they go pitter-pattering and swirling into a long river that becomes a song which itself sings of endless days and warm blanket goodnights; each comma a falcon’s talon and each ampersand a curly lock of hair. The parentheses expand and inflate like a balloon full of words, while the audience looks on, shocked and in horror, betting on when it’s going to pop and what sound will it make when it does. It is all wonderfull, wonderfull, wonderfilled, wonderoverflowed, my cup runneth over.

I am absorbed by the way that we all speak one language bur use different tones and shades and volumes and timbres and pronunciations and emphases in order to bend the language in as many ways as there are speakers of the language. (I didn’t omit any commas in that sentence. He just didn’t write any.)

For the nature lovers, the bird lovers, the family lovers, the sunrise and sunset lovers, the holding hands lovers, the God and the god and the universe lovers, the memories coming back lovers, the pain in between a smile and a smile in between the pain lovers, the fish behind the stone and the mystery behind the world lovers. For the teary-eyed lovers of the world, and those who want to love it more, I recommend this book.

The moist soil, the laboring beetles, the unwritten poem Of the lost leaves, the duff, the thin spidery bones of old Twigs. Once in a while we all stopped sprinting and just Stared at what was there all around us, the wealth of dirt, The sudden green feather about to adorn its second wild Animal, the tender next minute waiting for us to emerge.

First of all, you guys can't even fathom how much I love The Full Metal Bitch.

If there are 100 Full Metal Bitch fans in the world, I'm one of them. If there are 50, I'm one of them, if there are 2, me and the other one are holding hands. If there is only 1, I killed the other one so they could not take my place, and if there are no fans of The Full Metal Bitch left in this world, it's because she killed me with her massive fucking axe, and I thank her.

And yes, I will keep calling her The Full Metal Bitch everytime and I will not shorten it, because it's a sickass title and she earned it.

Anyway, now that I got that out of the way, the book was actually pretty cool! It had a massive uptick in quality, atmosphere, and immersion after the halfway point, but the beginning wasn't too bad either. I have a lot of lose thoughts, so I'll just say what I liked and didn't like:

What I liked:

I think the character work was pretty good for such a short novel! I was very much invested in the well-being of the two main protagonists. It was one of the strong points of the novel, in my opinion.

I also believe that, apart from the casual objectifying comments towards women here and there, that the female characters were written pretty well overall, and especially The Full Metal Bitch wasn't just some narrative tool to compare the MMC to and to eventually surpass. I was actually shocked at how much I liked the way the female characters were written. It's really nothing incredible, but with this being a manly military novel I had my expectations wayyy down, so I guess you could say that the bar was already low and I was glad to see it surpassed even a little bit.

And of course, the fights. Who doesn't love a good fight with a bunch of aliens while using a technologically enhanced suit of armor, so strong it is able to crush the spine of the person wearing it? All the concepts were sick, and I really liked the design of the aliens.

What I didn't like/was meh:

I think this novel should've been at least 50 pages longer, personally, because I don't think the Groundhog's Day dynamic was really explored all that well. I was expecting a lot more details when talking about the repetitions, and I was especially keen to read how his skills developed in each pass through the loop, but all that development was mostly done in the way of "tell, don't show", so there were some moments that (to me) should've become memorable scenes in the book, but they were never explored in a satisfactory way.

The whole mechanics and laws of how this loop even worked were a bit confusing and wonky, too. I think some details should've been left out (or maybe more added in) in order for it to make full sense in my head. But I personally wasn't going into this novel looking forward to the sci-fi aspect above all, so it doesn't bother me too much.

Also, there was too little blood, and too few cool drawn-out fights for my liking. Don't get me wrong, there was blood and fighting for sure, but not enough for what I expected based on the title being All You Need Is Kill. I am bloodthirsty and I 👹 WANTED 👹 MORE 👹.

In general, I think this novel suffered a bit from having one too many good ideas for the amount of page time the author was willing to give them. But the ideas were so cool that it still manages to keep your attention. Also, did I mention one of the characters is called The Full Metal Bitch? Because one of the characters is called The Full Metal Bitch, and yes, she does kick ass, indubitably.

Final note for anyone interested: Just as a heads-up, this is a military-inspired novel written in 2004, and boy can you tell. Some of the commentary and jokes here did not age well (I'm not sure if they were ever funny in the first place), but at the same time, I'm sure these are the types of things military men still say and do to this day when they're not too busy cleaning a whole bathroom with a toothbrush.

At some point, it almost felt like a parody of the entire culture of macho posturing and "dark humor" the military love so much, but I can't tell if the parody feeling comes from any intention of the author, or from the over-the-top American translation (I'm betting for the latter, but I don't know how faithful to the original this translation is, so don't listen to me too much). All of this is to say, be aware that this contains general locker room talk (homophobia, objectification of women, the whole deal), and also racist situations (I don't really know how else to describe them, but there's one scene which is pretty wild and even out of place), all of this mostly coming from secondary characters.

Warning: This review might be a bit shit, but I can't review this book in any objective or critical way. It's one of those books we all have. I can only say what it does to me.

I first finished this book a little over a year ago. It was the first day of February, and I had read the book in two days. I remember finishing it on my bus on the way to work. It was a Saturday, so I worked in the morning. The air was cold, and every road, building, and tree was tinted blue by the morning dawn, the sun not yet high in the sky. The world was quiet.

I arrived at my stop, I got down, I walked a few paces, for privacy, and then I sobbed.

Much like the protagonist in this novel, ironically, I, too, walked through an empty world that morning. I saw no one living or dead. In my—thankfully—long way to work, I wept, and I wept, and then the day arrived.

I do not believe I cried only because of the novel, but because of what the novel unlocked in me. From all the recognition and all the memories it brought forward. Me finally experiencing my own loss. If you cry about one thing, you cry about all things.

I want to try and define what this novel is, so maybe I'll start by saying what it's not.

The Review

This is not a typical zombie story. There is gore, so content warning about that. But you won't find any thrill or true horror here. This is a meditation on the nature of grief told through a story told through a zombie. But the zombies are not even the most important part. There is also the crow, the stump, the hunger, the cardigan, the trees, the moon, the stone, the beach, the silence. For some of these, the author will tell you what they are, but for others, you can choose to make sense of them in whichever way you prefer. "Every metaphor presents itself as what was there all along"

It is also not highlighter bait, even if it might appear that way at first. Upon first glance, it could strike you as a bunch of deep-sounding quotes taped together loosely through dubious plot, moving the protagonist to and fro until they land on the stage for their next tragic line. It's disjointed sometimes and spare in others, like a bunch of broken thoughts flying in the wind during a walk. I've highlighted this book more than all other books I've ever read combined. And yet, it all comes together. The parts talk to each other. I can feel the real pain and the real grief and the real human heart behind it all. Barely anything happens in the book, let me say it plainly. And yet the emotional world is so vast. As vast as you want it to be, as your own longing is, even.

It is also not immediately understandable. It's one of those stories you can read a million different ways. You can find connections, references, and hidden and not-so-hidden meanings. Moments that call out to you, or moments that remind you of your dad, your mom, your cousins, your long-dead grandma, your friends, or your country. The whole world can be found in it because grief does, indeed, fill the whole world, and you can find it even in as gentle an image as that of a tree, borne down with fruit. None of these interpretations, however, are real. Well, some of them are. The feelings behind them are.

And I found myself trying to understand it all, on both reads. I can connect some things to other things. I can find meaning in metaphors. I can find similarities to The Divine Comedy, to my own experiences, to things I've read that I don't remember where I read them anymore. It's all there if you look for it. And the thing is that, the protagonist tries to do so, too. We try to find meaning in this story, and we find that the protagonist is doing just the same. She wants meaning, depth. An end after what lasts forever. She wants to find a reason for all of this pain, and we search for it, too. Holding hands, we ask this world together, "Why?". But it doesn't answer, or maybe it does, but it's not the answer we want. The meaning is elusive.

What's behind this whole book, however, is the true nature of longing. Of saying goodbye a million times and knowing you will have to do it a million times more. The true heart of this book is a feeling we all have, and we'll all continue to have, if we're lucky enough to love something to the point of suffering it this much. The book is a long journey through yourself and each other, through the empty world of hope. Through the ruins, the abandoned cities, the forests, the world just beginning to fall asleep. She walks through the stages of grief like a walk through the country. She finds things, let's go of things, experiences changes, big and small, interior and exterior. It is funny at times; the laugh surprises you in the middle of the funeral. It is also hopeful at times, but you have to look for it. Even here, there is a light.

Grief has many names in this book. We can find it under every rock, in every object, in every person and animal, but that's the best we can do. The open hand of those who walk this same path with you—however, whoever—is the most meaning you'll ever find.

Final Thoughts

On my first read, I read this in two days. Like the protagonist, I was hungry. I was empty. This read, though, took me 22 days. It was a calmer experience. I could never read this book for more than 10 minutes without putting it down and listening to the emotions it stirred in me. I listened to my own crow as I went on this journey.

I could never read for more than 10 minutes at a time, so I savored it. I sipped this book, little by little, like the glass of wine I never had with you.

I listen to my heart like I can't listen to you. Because you're not here anymore, because I'm scared your voice has changed with age, because in every word I wish you were saying something else. I sipped this book like a glass of tears—like seawater—and it reminded me of you.