David Zimmerman

This book was ... difficult. It's well-written, with great voice, but it's just ... fucked up. That's really the only way to say it.

Art can be rough. Art can be scary. Art can be dark. It doesn't make the art bad, but it certainly doesn't make for a pleasant experience.

If I'm quite honest, I'm not sure what I got out of reading the book other than sort of the same type (not exactly the same, vis a vis scale and reality) of feeling as your 9/11 attack, or your Paris attacks (Charlie Hebdo or the nightclub campaign) — this is a thing that is possible. These are events and feelings that exist in the world, and from now on whenever I try to take a thought or an idea and skin it around my particular conceptual framework of How Things Are, it will forever have this sharp corner jutting out. The book's not reality (it's fiction), but the things that happened in it are not conceptually or practically impossible. They're barely even improbable, in some respects.

If you plan on making your way through this novel, make sure you have a nice chaser book prepared for after.… (more)

The Sandbox by David Zimmerman is set during the Iraqi War and features a likeable but bumbling soldier called Toby Durrant as the main character. He has already been kicked out of army Airborne training and flunked out of the Defence Language Institute. Unfortunately Toby is chosen to be the fall-guy so the higher ups can cover up a conspiracy involving missing millions in cash.

Toby and his friends slowly put the pieces together through prisoner interrogations, spying on their officers, and uncovering a counterinsurgency plan. And while the pages kept turning, I found this stylish, off-centre story intriguing but not very convincing. Granted the author made these soldiers come alive on the pages through their colourful language, “why me” attitude and black humor but by the end of the book, I was pretty much done with this hard luck soldier who stumbles through this rather absurd and convoluted melodrama.

So although The Sandbox wasn’t an exceptional debut, I would definitely be interested in seeing how this author progresses and whether he can tighten up his plots and make them a little more believable.… (more)