EAT THE APPLE

Matt Young / Bloomsbury / $ 25

After a drunken night, 18-year-old Matt Young decides enlisting in the US Marines is a good idea. Eat the Apple traces what happens next, from the brutality of basic training to three tours of Iraq, dissecting testosterone-fuelled masculinity along the way. Becoming a “jarhead” broke and made Young – he both detests and misses the unthinking “grunt” he became. This powerful memoir is courageous in its wartsand-all portrait of modern soldiering where combat is 90 per cent boredom before horror rips the world apart. Young’s writing is visceral and darkly humorous, bouncing from one chunk of reminiscence to another.