Having read and enjoyed Nick Arvin's novel Articles of War I better understand the Marianne Moore quote that precedes the book: "There never was a war that was not inward."

Truly, this is the theme of the novel, and the reason it is so effective. Articles of War reads like a dream, a fevered dream.

Most of us can only imagine what it's like to fight for one's country, or simply serve in an army. The soldiers by and large do what they're told, fight with what they're given, shoot at the people they're told to kill, and live or die largely by chance or their own wits.

Most soldiers remain unsung, their stories untold, their experiences not shared. Books like this one suggest what it's like on the ground where the killing takes place.

Articles of War also brings the reader into the heart of a moral question: What can people be ordered to do, and what can they not? Generals can order advances into withering fire. Can they also force soldiers to execute each other? What is bravery, and what is cowardice? By the end of this short novel the main character has fought, gotten lost, survived bombardments, been wounded, and been placed in just such moral dilemmas.

If you remember the famous true story of Private Eddie D. Slovik, the only soldier executed for desertion in World War II, you may imagine how excruciating the final few pages of this book are, yet also how fascinating.

Some books set in war time are concerned with spies and espionage. These tend to be thrillers that dip into danger, then out again. Other fiction sets out to portray war in all its decadent, despicable destruction. However true, these books have a political point to make aside from the truth on the ground.

I'm thinking here of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, or Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. Trumbo's scathing anti war novel appeared in 1939 at the start of the Second World War. The political timing couldn't have been more powerful for a novel portraying the horror of war and the desire to avoid it at all costs. The reader is left with an indelible memory painful as a nightmare.

Norman Mailer's first novel The Naked and the Dead brought readers face to face with real war in the South Pacific, while portraying the larger political forces at work.

There are wonderfully entertaining books that portray distant historical periods, and bring lost heroism and forgotten betrayals back to life for modern readers. The work of Patrick O'Brian and Bernard Cornwell leads a storied crew that includes C. S. Forester, Jan Needle, John Biggins and a bandwagon of others.

Memoirs do this as well -- some very effectively. But soldier's stories are written by survivors, people who emerged with brain and heart intact, able to remember and make sense of their experiences. Local veteran Charles Furey wrote one of the best of these in Going Back: A Navy Airman in the Pacific War. There are many others.

But there are few war novels as effective in their dream-like landscapes as Articles of War.

Just a few sentences will give you the flavor:

"He next became aware of a loud monotone -- his ears ringing. He pushed himself up. The world had an odd, washed-out appearance. The boy who had picked up the log had vanished. A hand lay off to one side. A boot stood nearby. No arm-torso-leg connected these. Heck looked at himself and saw that he was whole. The ground was covered with a thick spray of blood and gristle. One would not have thought a single man could be broken into so many parts. 'Booby trap!' someone shouted, absurdly late. Heck lay back and stared upward, seeing nothing.

"The next day it snowed for the first time. It came down in fat flakes that flickered against the darkness of the woods and sat in small white piles on the pine boughs. There was something terrible in seeing so familiar and beautiful a thing as snow in a place such as this..."

It's difficult to say why any reader would subject herself to a subject so grim and gritty. If there are good reasons they must start with the desire to understand. Novelist Nick Arvin brings war to life so effectively it's not possible to ignore the implications, at least not until the phone rings, the baby needs changing, the car needs gas, and however clumsily, life goes on another day.

Aired Sunday February 27, 2005 at 10:55 am and Monday February 28, 2005 at 8:40 am

Orders/Information:

Articles of War by Nick Arvin. Doubleday hardcover $24. ISBN 0385512775.

Jan Needle writes: "My books are usually seen as genre-busters, which some people don't take kindly to (including British critics, sometimes). Anyway, enough of that.... seriously though, Internet illiterate though I am, a friend has just web-paged me. if you've got a spare few minutes, check me out on http://www.janneedle.com

From http://enotes.com "Norman Beim's play The Deserter was first produced in the United States in 1978. The play was inspired by The Execution of Private Slovik, a 1974 book by William Bradford Huie. The book exposed the details of the execution of Private Eddie D. Slovik, the only American soldier executed for desertion during World War II. The play was also inspired by Beim's own experiences as an infantryman during World War II. Like the unnamed soldier in The Deserter, Beim also had qualms about killing enemy soldiers.