One man's garbage is another man's treasure... that cliched little nugget of wisdom has more to do with the nature of perception than wastefulness, and the perception of war -- all war, not just the Spanish Civil War that serves as the backdrop of this story -- is at the heart of this book. Ennis delivers what may be his most powerful War Story to date, and given the strength of the majority of the War Story thus far, that's really saying something.
A Spaniard, an Englishman, a German and an Irishman -- no, they don't walk into a bar -- all take refuge in the same foxhole as a barrage of artillery throws dust, rock and fire up all around them. Unarmed, they decide to simply wait the bombardment out together, despite being on two different sides in the Spanish Civil War. As they talk, they learn that their backgrounds and ideologies are as different as they can be. All but one has romanticized the notion of war as offering something of value... so the fourth shares his story, offering the most horrifying and sobering vision that war has to offer.
Ezquerra's gritty style is perfectly suited to conveying the filthy business of war. One really gets a sense of how grimy the four men are, how long they've been out in the field, scrambling to survive. But it's when Ezquerra tells the Spaniard's tale that the power of his art really takes hold. He holds nothing back, showing the reader just how ugly war really is. But it's not the visions of charred or torn flesh that disturb, but that someone would have it in them to rain down such suffering on another.
The key to this issue's success is that it consists of four separate character studies that stand up well on their own, but when put together like a puzzle, form an even richer, more telling picture of armed conflict. The Spaniard's shocking story would not have been nearly as effective if it hadn't been preceded by the others. There's a nice balance in the characters as well. Each one has at least one admirable quality, but each one is also blind or callous in some way as well.
Another impressive aspect of the book is how historically enlightening it is. I don't know about others, but the Spanish Civil War, not long before the outset of World War II, wasn't something they covered during my secondary education, and Ennis opens my eyes to a fascinating and apparently pivotal period in modern history. But it's not Ennis's knowledge of war that makes him such a skilled storyteller. It's his ability to bridge the divide between seemingly alien concepts -- such as war of this nature and at this level... it's really a foreign concept for the majority of my generation -- and make them real, enabling the reader to connect with it all on an emotional level.
