Missionaries

I thought Klay\’s \”Redeployment\” collection of linked short stories was one the the edgiest gut-punch accounts of combat in theater and emotional wounds inflicted at home ever written. So I was eager to read his first novel \”Missionaries.\” At 400 pages, it sees itself as a big, bloody tapestry about people at war on many fronts. But it never connects. Lots of incident — with little impact — because a reader never cares about the characters….they never come to life. Each character is just a stand-in for some aspect or idea about war or war correspondence. A major disappointment. on every level. Even so, I look forward to whatever Klay writes next.

Phil Klay has written a book that’s a pretty good novel, but also an insightful and deep treatise on the low intensity conflict wars of the 21st century. Missionaries follows a US Special Forces medic, a war correspondent, a Columbian Special Forces officer and a former Columbian death squad member who is trying to go straight plus a host of supporting characters through action that takes place in Afghanistan, Columbia and Yemen with forays into other “trouble spots”. As it follows these characters, it takes a deep look at the various strategies and tactics of insurgencies and those who seek to control them. Narco terror, jihadi revolutionaries, Maoists with Che Guevara variants, right wing death squads on one side, firepower dominance, counter insurgency, targeted killing and so forth on the other. While at times the exposition can be a little heavy handed (the Columbian Lt. Colonel’s critique of Che Guevara for example) for the most part the reader will be entertained while they learn something. All this is mixed with a ton of action. There are offhand but graphic descriptions of head on combat and terrorist actions (something really only differentiated by who “wins”) that are unsettling in their intensity. This is not a book to read before bed if you really want to sleep. The action is punctuated by honest depictions of the frustrations of the people fighting these wars who long for a “stand up fight” but have to abide by the larger strategic (and sometimes venal political) restrictions that limit their freedom of action. Klay is a former Marine and it shows. The jargon, the soldier’s attitudes, the descriptions of equipment and tactics are all dead on accurate. Highly recommend for anyone who wants an unvarnished but entertaining look at the endless wars of our time.

Phil Klay’s landmark novel Missionaries offers vivid and haunting glimpses into the implementation and impact of modern war in regions as distant from one another as those of Iraq and Afghanistan to those of Colombia and Venezuela. His immensely engrossing and equally profound narrative weaves together a tapestry of four storylines with an array of unforgettable characters within each narrative thread. He gives us a spectrum of individuals from those who have decision-making influence to initiative war, to those who cover and report the chaos of war, to those who fight on the frontlines of war, and to those who suffer and become the victims of the unrestrained violence of war. Each of the four central storylines focuses on the plight of a major character. We see Abel, a Colombian native, as he suffers terrible loss in his country’s rural towns and how he then becomes a combatant in a militia before trying to redirect his life towards normalcy. We see Lisette, a daring reporter, as she delivers up correspondence in Afghanistan before she sets her journalistic sights on Colombia’s villages and towns ravished by the narco and drug lords. We see Mason, an Army medic, as he endures the rigors of combat, and then we see him as a veteran working for the U.S. government as a consultant to the Colombian military. And we see Juan Pablo, a lieutenant colonel in the Colombian special forces, and how he is responsible for tracking down narco targets and strategizing operations. Klay had me invested in the lives of each of these major characters, and he does a remarkable job at giving us access to the struggles of these people. We experience their range of emotions from fear to courage to grief to hope, and we share in the most traumatic and intimate of their experiences. In addition, the scope of Klay’s narrative does not cling exclusively to the major players. He allows us to feel the sorrow, dread, and despair of the civilians in isolated, vulnerable locales from the Middle East to South America. He likewise offers insight into the minds of the characters as they become more and more entwined in the madness and consequences of modern warfare. Moreover, Klay has the ability to provide a frightening window into the cold-blooded desensitization of criminals and terrorists as they carry out unspeakable acts of cruelty for revenge, power, money, and sometimes for no specific reason, except that they can. The epic nature of Klay’s novel is rife with psychological details and with riveting philosophical passages, but he skillfully maintains a constant degree of suspense that had my heart racing and my blood chilled as the storylines inched forward to where the four major characters’ paths began to intersect. Missionaries is an essential novel for understanding our wanton era, and Klay bears witness to scenes of unflinching brutality and carnage, but mostly he offers an intense look at the modern world’s struggles against acts of inhumanity. In giving us the authenticity of war from multiple viewpoints, Klay enables us to see who we are and where we are headed in our unfolding history of violence. After winning the National Book Award for his debut story collection Redeployment, I hope Missionaries also receives significant attention from the Pulitzer, Booker, and other award committees. Klay’s novel is the most original and ingenious piece of fiction I’ve read since Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer in 2015, and it’s just as spectacular and engaging in its epic breadth and sweep as Julie Orringer’s The Flight Portfolio from 2019. I can hardly wait to see where Klay’s vision takes him with his next project.

Brutal and tender, wide ranging and written with a clever focus. I swallowed Missionaries in two rewarding, if sometimes uncomfortable, sittings. I\’ve not had experiences in war, although I have lived through terror, and his understanding and skill at translating real dread and death stakes into fiction left me rapt, even when I wanted to look away, I couldn\’t. This book is ugly and beautiful and I won\’t soon forget it. Klay\’s brilliant storytelling matches his subject, which is my favorite to read: Duty vs desire, family vs country, wrapped in obligation or driven for no relatable reason. And in the midst, with his deep cast of well drawn characters, he makes a case that war is unjust, and its pursuit, the opposite of humanity.

I bought this book because the theme appealed to me and it was well reviewed. I wanted insight into what happened in Colombia. Now half way through this book. It’s a slog. The author has an arrogant writing style. Characterizations are shallow and trite. He has a flippant attitude toward war and human suffering. I’ve never read a book with so many acronyms. Where were the editors that they let him get away with that? Perhaps he was writing only to an audience of ex-military and has no aspirations for literary excellence.

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