Five and Twenty-Fives (Pitre)

Book Reviews
Mr. Pitre…provides an unblinking, razor-edged portrait of the war through the lives of members of his fictional platoon. Like Phil Klay in his short-story collection Redeployment, he focuses on the war's emotional fallout—not just in real time in Iraq, but afterward, too, as it continues to haunt veterans following their return home…Mr. Pitre makes us care about all these soldiers and their efforts to navigate the war.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times Book Review


Gripping and penetrating.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution


(Starred review.) [u]nflinching portrait of the Iraq war, both through flashbacks to the conflict and stories about its principal characters once they have returned home.... Pitre’s restrained depictions...[are] praiseworthy. But it’s the nuanced take on Dodge’s divided loyalties...that imbues the novel with depth and integrity.
Publishers Weekly


Pitre’s suspenseful debut, influenced by his combat experience in the Iraq War, follows a Marine Corps road crew searching for hidden bombs on the treacherous highways encircling Baghdad.... A thrilling, defining novel of the Iraq War. —Adam Morgan
Booklist


The quiet pathos of war, its aftermath and the individuals affected by it, and the inability of a tone-deaf society to relate to them, is rendered with poignancy and stark honesty in Fives and Twenty-Fives. Readers will be floored by Pitre's spare literary style, the authenticity of each of his characters' three different voices, and those mesmerizing characters themselves...; we are lucky to have such a fine voice as Pitre's....
Shelf Awareness


(Starred review.) The corrosive psychological effects—and the dark humor—of modern conflict are hauntingly captured in Iraq War veteran Pitre's powerfully understated debut.... Though the narrative voices...sometimes blend together, and the scenes on the homefront...are a bit undercooked, those are minor flaws in a book in which everything rings so unshakably true.... [O]ne of the definitive renderings of the Iraq experience.
Kirkus Reviews