I got to meet Fountain last month in Nashville at the Southern Festival of Books
Larry Send a noteboard - 13/11/2012 10:56:43 PM
It's an easy read, and yet there's a lot packed into the book. I really enjoyed the way it was written, and like you I thought the characterisation was great.
He's a very nice and humble man. We talked briefly while he was signing my book about our mutual love for Gabriel García Márquez's fiction and translations and he struck me as the sort of person who writes to discover what it is about people that make us do such outrageous things such as those described in the book.
You might also be interested in this dual interview of Fountain and Powers that the NYTBR ran earlier today:
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
Je suis méchant.
Je suis méchant.

Reviews of the 2012 National Book Award finalists (Poetry, YA, Non-Fiction, Fiction)
12/11/2012 08:39:13 PM
- 994 Views
Young People's Literature
12/11/2012 08:58:44 PM
- 678 Views
Steve Sheinkin, Bomb: The Race to Build – and Steal – the World's Most Dangerous Weapon
12/11/2012 09:07:32 PM
- 869 Views
Sounds very interesting. I may give it a go
18/11/2012 11:19:19 AM
- 938 Views
It's a good primer read, but I suspect there are more in-depth studies of the Manhattan Project
18/11/2012 08:44:09 PM
- 844 Views
Non-Fiction
12/11/2012 09:16:35 PM
- 784 Views
Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
12/11/2012 09:23:30 PM
- 890 Views
Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East
12/11/2012 09:27:07 PM
- 721 Views
Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1945-1956
12/11/2012 09:29:59 PM
- 799 Views
Fiction
12/11/2012 09:34:43 PM
- 614 Views
Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King
12/11/2012 09:37:02 PM
- 797 Views
I like him, and I want to read this. *NM*
15/11/2012 04:17:18 PM
- 430 Views
I've read all but one of his novels and this one is near the bottom in terms of interest/quality
18/11/2012 08:45:17 PM
- 943 Views
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
13/11/2012 07:45:53 AM
- 818 Views
I loved it.
13/11/2012 05:16:13 PM
- 710 Views
I got to meet Fountain last month in Nashville at the Southern Festival of Books
13/11/2012 10:56:43 PM
- 830 Views
Junot Díaz, This is How You Lose Her
14/11/2012 01:47:31 PM
- 818 Views