Bring Out the Dog

Praise

“Tobias Wolff once lamented that ‘when people use the word ‘Nam’ it’s like salt on a slug.’ But a recent spate of fiction about contemporary war signals an end to the combat clichés. Onto this fertile ground parachutes Will Mackin’s Bring Out the Dog. A U.S. Navy veteran with five combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan under his belt, Mackin also produces the kind of simultaneously sharp and ethereal writing that caused George Saunders to bless him with a story-length blurb. On one page of Mackin’s debut are ‘Taliban [leaping] from the ditch’; on the next, ‘Time passed mysteriously inside the clouds.’”—Vanity Fair

“Bring Out the Dog is not just one hell of a stunning debut—it’s also proof that Mackin is one to watch going forward. Drawing from notes he took while working in special operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the stories illuminate the human condition in unimaginable, haunting ways—and bring to life a voice that is unlike any other in the modern canon.”—PopSugar

“[Bring Out the Dog] is blustery, unsettling, observant, absurd, and all too real.”—Fiction Advocate

“Gritty, crisply written, cinematic stories.”—Albuquerque Journal

“Mackin has produced something that holds up alongside the very best war literature of the twenty-first century. . . . Bring Out the Dog is both complex and compelling, offering up small glimpses of the surreal alongside moments of heartbreak and of heroism. Mackin’s prose displays a deftness that belies its basic muscularity; it’s an ideal mix in terms of presenting these stories with the ring of genuine truth. . . . This is a brilliant debut, a work unafraid to use brute force to evoke an uncommon grace. Mackin’s vision consummately captures the lives of soldiers dealing with the physical and psychological stresses of a seemingly unending war. . . . It is magnificent.”—The Maine Edge

“The short book of short stories launches the twenty-three-year Navy veteran into the pantheon-in-progress of literary fiction coming out of today’s wars.”—Military Times (best books of the year)

“Every war seems to spawn its own bookshelf of fiction (e.g., Hemingway, Heller, O’Brien, Stone and, more recently, Klay, Powers and Ackerman), and the writers who endure display talents for observation, voice and narrative that outlive the high-strung emotion of the battlefield. A navy veteran with multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Will Mackin is one of those with staying power. The stories in his debut, Bring Out the Dog, are told with such verisimilitude, such balance between compassion and cynicism, such lean haunting prose, that one can’t easily shake them. . . . Read Bring Out the Dog for its insight into those who fight our modern wars, but read it again for its grasp of the vicissitudes of the human heart.”—Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“Unforgettable . . . spellbinding and adrenaline-fueled . . . It is the language as much as the experience that drives the action, creating taut, almost terrifying suspense. Mackin’s masterful prose is both poetic and aggressive.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)