Helga without the H

Three star review, originally posted here on July 7, 2017.

I’m guessing that I approached this book from a different angle than the majority of other people who read it. I had never heard of Pat Tillman before, and instead came to this book because I saw it on a list of Krakauer books. “This obscure story sounds interesting,” I thought. And soon I learned that apparently Pat Tillman (and the story of his death) are famous and I somehow just either missed it when it happened or forgot about it over time. Coming at the story completely fresh with no preconceived bias (beyond guessing that I would wind up agreeing with whatever Krakauer’s take would be since that’s his job and he is generally good at it), I think I never really wound up getting that into the story, I think because I didn’t find Tillman himself particularly interesting or even likable. The book was fine, but didn’t do much to suck in a blank slate reader such as myself. I think it would have worked much better for me as a longer magazine article than as a full-up dense book that was jam-packed with details I couldn’t bring myself to get into.