End of Active Service

by Matt Young

A raw and rampaging debut novel from the author of the “inventive, unsparing, irreverent and consistently entertaining” (NYTBR) memoir Eat the Apple-examining the war after the war for US returning home.What was it like? It's the only thing anyone wants to know about war-and the last thing Corporal Dean Pusey wants to talk about, at least not with one of these fat and happy civilians crowding the bar. Dean is two months free from the Marine Corps, and life back in his Indiana hometown is anything but peaceful. That's when the woman next to him offers to buy him a drink. Max is nice-gorgeous, funny, easy to talk to. Dean doesn't dare tell her about the sheep he took care of on his first deployment, only to watch it get torn to shreds by a pack of wild dogs; or the naked, shivering Iraqi teenager his platoon detained after an IED blast. He needs to leave all that behind and become a new person-the kind who sticks around when Max gets pregnant. He's white-knuckling it, trying to maintain, and it's not easy. Harder still when his friend and comrade Ruiz starts showing up all over the place like he's been invited-like he didn't die a year ago. He has Max now, he has his baby daughter River. He doesn't have time for ghosts. With his signature black humor, hard-eyed honesty, and stylistic ingenuity, Matt Young delivers a novel that turns the typical war story on its head-beginning not with enlistment but with retirement, and locating the life-or-death stakes not in battle, but in the domestic theaters of fatherhood, family, forgiveness, and love.

Genres: Fiction, Adult

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 18, 2024

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dean has recently completed his time served in the Marine Corps. As he is struggling to readjust to being home, he meets Max. Shortly after, Max gets pregnant. As Dean tries to pretend he's fine, his world is slowly falling apart. Not an easy read, but you can really feel for the characters. I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Olivier Damien Escotíez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny, I don't even remember where I discovered this gem. The author tells a gripping story of a Marine learning to deal with civilian life again, all the while battling his own demons and conflicted, tortured Shadow. The book is filled with emotion, tears, frustration and unmitigated joy. As a gay man from a military family, I can't express how much this book cleanly blew me out of the water. Loved every goddamn word of it. Perfection. This is why I read. Joy Joy Joy!

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

i'd read this man's grocery lists

[Abby Ott-Bales · Rating 3 out of 5]

It deals with undiagnosed mental illness and made me feel anxious the whole time. I’m definitely curious how veterans would react to the story. But I’m not a veteran, so it was hard for me to connect with the main character. I just felt bad for him the whole time.

[Ray Labbe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This author was an infantry Marine who served with one of my units at Camp Pendleton and had combat tours in Fallujah a couple of years after mine. This book is a fictional story about trying to transition back into civilian life after those experiences. So much of what was shared in this story was stuff I could see, taste, and still feel. From experience I can tell you it’s a hell of a transition, and this book shook me with its raw exposed nerves. The book’s first few pages declare that it is a love story and not a war story. I think that declaration was a useful facade that allowed the author to open up his soul and let a lot of darkness out in pursuit of a higher cause. It is one hell of a book and I’m really grateful for the many things, good and bad, that it allowed me to remember and re-examine.

[Kathleen Dang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy fuck this was beyond good

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting perspective on postwar adjustments to civilian life. Probably not full-blown PTSD, but certainly something similar. The perspective of a young man dealing with his own immaturity is particularly important since most veterans find themselves in this category. I wish the adoption and sexuality angles had been explored more. These were interesting elements that seemed not to have been well developed.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Combat veteran returns from Iraq and struggles with PTSD, trying to live a normal life with his constant companions- the relentlessly provoking ghost of his friend/lover/fellow marine and the ghost of a sheep that he failed to protect in Iraq. Interesting, engaging, and important.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t speak to the particulars of being a veteran or Marine but this book did so many things well in regard to describing trauma and addiction and denial. Effective for me in the same way as Tim
O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.

[madison 🖤🦇 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really good! And gorgeous book cover :)

[Fets · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I am married to an Ex-Marine from Indiana, how could I not read a book about an Ex-Marine from Indiana? Disturbing how the military trains young boys to be warriors, living on the edge of life and death, and then releases them into society with nothing more than a few days training on breathing exercises. The author does an excellent job of giving you access to Dean’s head, you are with him as he struggles, somehow the madness makes sense in the moment, and you are rooting for him to figure it out before something bad happens. Luckily this book is not a tragedy. I thought the writing was sharp, witty, intelligent, compelling. Feels like a must read if you want to understand the struggles of coming off military training.

Dean Pusey has recently moved back home with his mom in Indiana after getting out of the military. He’s working at UPS trying to save money for college. His mom married a liberal anti-gun Christian dude. He meets his high school best friend Court at a bar for a drink, and strikes up a conversation with Max. He dreams of slipping seamlessly back into civilian life “fat and happy.” But the intensity that gave him success in the military gets him trouble - fight at the bar, accused of assault by a co-worker, continuing military exercises with the assault rifle he purchased. The only time he’s able to relax is when he’s hanging out with Max. After a brief relationship, Max gets pregnant, so suddenly that situation becomes intense too, and he’s got no refuge.

Dean’s instability is marked by the ghosts that haunt him - Ruiz (his best friend in the Marines who killed himself, they also had a sexual relationship and “got each other off”, he was in love with Ruiz in a complicated bromance), the sheep (tasked with tending to the sheep by his Sergeant in Iraq, he gets attached and upset when the sheep is killed by wild dogs after he set it free, trying to save it from becoming BBQ, this leads to his Marine Corps nickname “lamb chops”), the dead Iraqi interpreter BJ (aka Ali), his birth mother in Washington State.

Deans emotions alternate rapid fire between anger, sadness, fear, shame and hope. He’s a sensitive guy that joined the military on a whim. He pretends to be okay to those around him, but we get to hear the thoughts he doesn’t say. He’s wired, doesn’t sleep for days on end, ran out Ativan, seeing the ghosts constantly. It climaxes with Max having to leave him home alone with the baby for a few days while she travels for work. You are left very scared for baby River as Dean is losing his grip, buying her guns, takes her to a party looking for Ativan. Luckily Court comes through in the end and brings them to his mom’s house where mom, sister Penny and step dad Rick intervene and get him help.

Spoiler alert - Max and Dean don’t end up together. They nicely co-parent River. Dean goes to college and becomes a teacher. He’s in anger management classes and has strategies to keep it under control. He never finds his birth mother and his mom never reveals the details regarding his adoption. We don’t find out why the military denied Ruiz’ request to re-enlist or why he killed himself. Dean is single but reports dating women and men, but then states he’s “not gay” and doesn’t go deep at all regarding his sexuality. I would have liked more resolution on some of these issues, but I guess that wasn’t the point of the book, and a book can only be so long, so some stuff has to be left unsaid. But this is a great book that will stick with you for a long time.

[Nicole Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me time to fully appreciate the book. I knew it would be a hard read. Filled with potentially disturbing imagery. My brother served two tours of duty as a combat infantry soldier over 15 years ago, so I have heard a little of his deployment and I’ve seen him struggle with the impact of being in the military, how hard that can make his daily life and the effect of it on the people in his life. He has PTSD and TBI. The book conveys the scope of hardship of reintegrating into civilian life and mental health issues a soldier may come home with. I would like to point out that nothing terribly awful and tragic occurs. Three quarters of the way through the book, considering how out of touch with reality the main character was, I became greatly concerned I was reading a tragedy. I was not. The book is about moving forward after war, seeing the need for and seeking help and truthful that growing in resilience and awareness is a continuing experience.

[Eli Snyder · Rating 4 out of 5]

We find our protagonist home after his time in the Marines ends. As he transitions back into civilian life, his experiences on the frontlines haunt him. From this point, when life complicates, our protagonist is forced to either speak up and get the help he needs or continue suffering alone--tormented by memories from wartime.

I have read some literature about war, but nothing that centers the perpetual war after veterans return home--PTSD. Through this, Young is able to write on the consequences of war, masculinity, mental health, violence, and isolation.

I believe the representation of mental health struggles in books is critical. Young is able to provide insight into such struggles from a necessary vantage point, and I hope some feel a bit less alone after reading this--I know I did.

[Tommy Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a novel. But it feels real. More real than nonfiction. In that way that only a novel can feel real. The story is one many GWOT vets will relate to, but it is a specifically GWOT story. Told exceptionally artfully. The challenges of leaving war behind are surreal, and this book captures that (ghosts and hallucinations etc). The way we are haunted by our past. It's not universally relatable, not every experience, not even every military experience, is the same. This story is specific, real (in a fictional and extreme way), and lived in.

It's easy to 'say' it's ok to not be ok. This book shows how hard it is to live it, how hard it might be to go on living anything after leaving war behind.

[Susannah Breslin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Matt Young's memoir, EAT THE APPLE, which I thought was brilliant and wildly inventive. Now he's followed that book with a novel that explores what happens when a man comes home from the war. In this alarmingly intimate, relentlessly passionate, and ruthlessly frank book, we find out how the fog of war disjoints time, troubles intimacy, and sends a soul reeling. It's a beautiful book, and I highly recommend it for anyone -- solider or civilian -- who's loved, let go, and started over.

[Grace McIlwain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow- what a moving story. This novel follows an Iraq veteran who is adjusting back to civilian life and put off getting help for so long because of the mental health stereotypes that had been pushed onto him over time.

Very well written. Made me frustrated at times saying “go to the VA!!” But the was the whole point!

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This writing style is certainly A Choice; personally, it's agony to read: every sentence is a fragment and there are no quotation marks. The rat-a-tat tempo certainly fits the ex-Marine narrator, but that doesn't make it any easier. It's exacerbating my anxiety!

Program topics: none

Discussion prompts: none

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goes back and forth in time (which I don't really like) but it feels real. Unfortunately I’m not a fan of the writing and it’s making me not want to keep reading. I keep finding excuses to put the book down so I’m just gonna call it quits
DNF @ 39%

[Saturn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Checked this book out from the library right after I found out I wasn’t going to be able to commission traditionally and started reading just after I left my school’s regiment, and what a beautiful book. So well written and really resonated with me on a personal level. 5/5 stars.

[George Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written with heart, honesty, and humor. Very enjoyable!

[Bob Lingle · Rating 5 out of 5]

While dealing with the difficult subject matter of the lasting impact of war, Matt Young delivers a story with an honest voice and refreshing humor. Outstanding read.

[Luke Matheson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by a combat veteran and does an excellent job at getting into the mind of a combat veteran trying to piece life back together. Thank god for therapy!

[Daniel Ashley Welch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well written - definitely got frustrated that the main character wouldn’t help himself, but I guess that’s the point here.

[April D]

Couldn’t finish it. The punctuation/grammar had me reading sentences over and over. Couldn’t do it.

[Josie · Rating 5 out of 5]

yeah this might be my favorite book of all time