What do you think?
Rate this book
Peripheral
392 pages, Paperback
Published April 30, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 3, 2026
Look, I grew up in a time and place where a kid going into the armed services instead of college/Ivy League was seen as a failure on the school system and the individual who went that route. Add that to my super progressive values and I've not had a good view on enlisted folks, and tended to see them as a monolith through a rather disparaging lens.
This book did something that I'm rather proud of, and is the whole point of reading and exploring others' stories: It brought life, sympathy, some kindness and understanding to folks who walk this path. It allowed me to see the humanity in people I admittedly struggled to do so with, prior to reading this. It helped me grow.
Plot: A slice-of-life vignette of 5 men who have served, and their very different personalities/fall outs/consequences of that service.
Style: There is a lot of allegory and metaphor here, so I'd suggest not going into this with a topical approach.
CWs: A very male-centered novella, R-rated language, minor blood and violence, nonconsensual sexualized nudity. (All appropriate for these characters in this timeframe)
Reviewer's Note: I know the author very well, and helped edit two drafts of this novella. However, I am straightforward, and honest in this review. If it was a crap story I wouldn't review it.
This book did something that I'm rather proud of, and is the whole point of reading and exploring others' stories: It brought life, sympathy, some kindness and understanding to folks who walk this path. It allowed me to see the humanity in people I admittedly struggled to do so with, prior to reading this. It helped me grow.
Plot: A slice-of-life vignette of 5 men who have served, and their very different personalities/fall outs/consequences of that service.
Style: There is a lot of allegory and metaphor here, so I'd suggest not going into this with a topical approach.
CWs: A very male-centered novella, R-rated language, minor blood and violence, nonconsensual sexualized nudity. (All appropriate for these characters in this timeframe)
Reviewer's Note: I know the author very well, and helped edit two drafts of this novella. However, I am straightforward, and honest in this review. If it was a crap story I wouldn't review it.
June 20, 2026
Until recently, I knew almost nothing about military life beyond what I'd absorbed from television and film. I'd never personally known anyone who enlisted, and like a lot of people, I carried my share of assumptions about who chooses that path and why. I'm a college-educated, liberal progressive woman who usually reaches for sci-fi, fantasy, or nonfiction — this book was about as far outside my lane as it gets. And yet I couldn't put it down.
What makes Stanfield's writing so effective is how he dismantles stereotypes without ever feeling like he's lecturing. He introduces four strikingly different characters and lets us watch each one process trauma in his own way, until they stop feeling like "soldiers" and start feeling like people you know. Less than 1% of Americans currently serve, and yet the popular image of them is so often flattened into something emotionless and macho. Stanfield refuses that flattening. He gives these men interiority, contradiction, tenderness — and in doing so, gave me a kind of understanding and compassion I didn't have going in.
What surprised me most was how literary the book is underneath its momentum. The prose moves fast and the story pulls you forward, but Stanfield is clearly working in layers — there's a current of metaphor and symbolism running through the narrative that I suspect rewards rereading more than I caught the first time. It's rare to find a book that's this emotionally raw and this intellectually constructed at once. The setting helps too: the group's journey through the Florida Keys is rendered so vividly that it's now firmly on my list for my next vacation.
Our country feels more divided by the day, and books like this one feel like a quiet antidote — a way to understand people whose lives look nothing like our own. Stanfield pushed me well outside my comfort zone, and somehow made it the most comfortable place to land. Read this book.
What makes Stanfield's writing so effective is how he dismantles stereotypes without ever feeling like he's lecturing. He introduces four strikingly different characters and lets us watch each one process trauma in his own way, until they stop feeling like "soldiers" and start feeling like people you know. Less than 1% of Americans currently serve, and yet the popular image of them is so often flattened into something emotionless and macho. Stanfield refuses that flattening. He gives these men interiority, contradiction, tenderness — and in doing so, gave me a kind of understanding and compassion I didn't have going in.
What surprised me most was how literary the book is underneath its momentum. The prose moves fast and the story pulls you forward, but Stanfield is clearly working in layers — there's a current of metaphor and symbolism running through the narrative that I suspect rewards rereading more than I caught the first time. It's rare to find a book that's this emotionally raw and this intellectually constructed at once. The setting helps too: the group's journey through the Florida Keys is rendered so vividly that it's now firmly on my list for my next vacation.
Our country feels more divided by the day, and books like this one feel like a quiet antidote — a way to understand people whose lives look nothing like our own. Stanfield pushed me well outside my comfort zone, and somehow made it the most comfortable place to land. Read this book.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews