There is something remarkably unsatisfying about this book; though I am certain his friends will enjoy it immensely. Cliché after cliché is lovingly and deliberately reproduced, because it is precisely this adolescent fantasy that Hennessey wants tobe living. If shooting real people is “fun” it is because the proximity of death puts his own vitality into such stark relief. To be fair one learns an awful lo about life at Sandhurst, about regimental life in general and about the culture junior officers are socialised into bit it stll reads much less like a memoir of war and more like a cleverly marketed and pitched faux-memoir/diary for the iPod generation.

Book Review: The Junior Officers Reading Club | Small Wars Book Review: The Junior Officers Reading Club | Small Wars

Soldiers and Prisons: Reflections on Military Interventions in the Latin American and Caribbean Prison System. He yearns to be able to “spin real tales to the girls I wanted to fancy me… and the boys I wanted to be jealous of me”. As he reiterates several times, there is a huge gulf in understanding between those who have fought for the Army and those who have not.Of course he would like to be better equipped, but how can journalists criticise an army system that they have never themselves experienced? It is only once we grasp this that we realise we might have misjudged this book and the officer who wrote it.

Junior Officers Reading Club by Hennessey Patrick - AbeBooks Junior Officers Reading Club by Hennessey Patrick - AbeBooks

Some may find that tone and style refreshing but I for one found it self-indulgent with a whiff of the flippant.

The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. But if Patrick Hennessey is to be believed, none of these are uppermost in the minds of today’s young recruits. It is this journey that makes Hennessey’s book, which in the end is surprisingly thoughtful, honest and compelling, worth reading.

Junior Officers Reading Club by Hennessey - AbeBooks Junior Officers Reading Club by Hennessey - AbeBooks

By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.When Hennessey admits that fighting gives him a “high”, perhaps he is being more honest than is good for him. By the time he leaves the Army he has been transformed from a pretentious young cadet into a wiser, less cocksure officer.

Junior Officers’ Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey: review The Junior Officers’ Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey: review

His frustration at journalists who criticise the Army for not looking after “our boys in Iraq” shows not only a grip of politics but a firm and clear understanding of his own complex feelings on the matter. Its like he read Rumors of War, Dispatches and John Masters' Bugles and a Tiger and then watched Apocalypse Now 10 times then wrote the book. My comments on the above named work haven't changed since the review I wrte for SWC (brief but to the point). Its a horror story of everything that can go wrong with how a young officer can develop on his first combat tour.

Even the endless hours of boredom in Iraq – during which he forms the reading club of the title – are like a scene from Jarhead. If he expresses it with reference to books and war films, it is simply because these are the only places that he – and indeed most of us – have ever seen such scenes.