Draw Your Weapons was a non-fiction novel thrust into my hands on Love Your Bookshop day. Something different to try, I was so glad I went out of my comfort zone. A difficult one to summarise as it is nothing like anything else I have read. A collection of anecdotes, snippets of information about everything from war and violence to art and photography to psychology and theology. This book examines the relationship we have with violence and war and how it interacts with all these mediums and theories about how we relate to it. Plus there are personal stories from the author and her experiences with several people who have travelled these paths.
This book was compelling, fascinating and heart-breaking. This book may kill your faith in humanity a little but the content is so important and something we all should consider at some point. You want to race your way through, consume it all at once but also you know that you want to savour it, linger over the concepts, drawing meaning from the words. I will warn you, if you read it your Google history may end up looking a little dodgy. I found myself googling waterboarding, Nazi conspirators and internment camps for the Japanese during WWII, just to name a few.
Draw Your Weapons is something that you can read over and over and learn a little more from it each time. As I have mentioned the format is unlike anything else I have read before. The paragraphs may seem random at times but it somehow all works together perfectly. This is an exceptional piece of work, one of the most thought-provoking tinges I have read and I’m so glad it found it’s way into my hands. I know my descriptions don’t really do it justice, it is such a hard book to encapsulate in a few paragraphs but I would urge everyone to pick this one up immediately. I give Draw Your Weapons five bombs ready to blow.
