Get Some : paperback

Sonja Yelich's new collection is a daring departure from the award- winning Clung. It follows an American marine, Edgar, serving in Iraq, and the responses of his family back home to his tour of 'doody'. Yelich vividly contrasts his life with his family's, and serves up a whirlwind of perspectives on the war and contemporary American life from The Sopranos to Black Hawk Down, YouTube to SUVs. The narrative of Edgar and his family begins to fragment through the book as the horror of war deepens - a marine loses a leg and a plane 'breaks its nose on / Poor visibility in summer'. Yelich, highlighting the confusion of war, leaves a reader guessing as to Edgar's eventual fate. Chilling, funny, deeply sad and immensely thought-provoking, get some is the work of a writer pushing the capacities of language to express the potential of violence to erupt in everyday life.