PRAISE FOR BRING OUT THE DOG:
“Mackin’s fiction situates the reader in the headspace of an elite soldier who records the realities and irrealities of contemporary warfare, as well as the most heartless and heartful eruptions of human nature on both sides, with an audacious, infrared clarity.” PEN/BINGHAM AWARD Judges Chris Abani, Frances Hwang, and Gary Lutz
"Bring Out the Dog announces the arrival of a great writer, at just the moment when his signature combination of complexity, heart, stylistic verve, and fearlessness is sorely needed.” GEORGE SAUNDERS, Man Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo
“Bring Out the Dog is a strikingly original debut, and Mackin’s predecessors, if any, are Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato and Donald Barthelme’s “The Sargeant.” Yet it is almost unfair to ascribe influence here, because all three of these writers are remarkable for their uncanniness and originality. For their brilliance, as well.” ERIK HAGE, Harvard Review
“Stunning...In one exquisitely crafted story after the next, Will Mackin maps the surreal psychological terrain of soldiers in a perpetual war." PHIL KLAY, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment
“Good stories that deal with war must deal with the extremes of war: heroic altruism and murderous selfishness, piercing beauty and disgusting ugliness. Mackin hits all the notes and all the notes sound true. These stories are right at the top with the best I’ve ever read.” KARL MARLANTES, New York Times Bestselling author of Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War
“In this spellbinding, adrenaline-fueled debut linked collection, Mackin pulls from his own time in the Navy to follow a team of SEALs who, from 2008 to 2011, serve and try to survive together, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan.” PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review