Benjamin Hertwig (Céline Chuang)

When readers first meet Plinko, the focal character of Edmonton writer Benjamin Hertwig’s harrowing and powerful debut novel, Juiceboxers, it is 1999 and he is 16 years old, a fan of The Lord of the Rings, “thick but not in a muscular, helpful way,” the son of divorced and distant parents, and a grudging high school student. He is also attending Army basic training in Wainwright, Alberta, as the novel opens. Those summer weeks will shape his life, introducing him to Walsh and Abdi, “fireteam partners,” friends who will form the core of his social group, and who begin to establish his identity as a soldier and cement his nickname, first bestowed by an older soldier after he confesses that “All [he] really want[s] out of life” is to go to California with his mother and appear on The Price is Right. “And maybe win a thousand bucks playing the great game of Plinko.” 

Juiceboxers follows Plinko and his confederates (including the repulsive but oddly charismatic Krug, an older soldier obsessed with guns, booze, and porn) through the 9/11 terror attacks, their deployment to Afghanistan, their time in-country, and their return home. Knowledge of the global events through which the characters live adds a considerable frisson to the work; the dramatic irony of Canada’s participation in a failed war creates low-level suspense – and anxiety – that underscores even the most banal of scenes.

A former soldier who served in Afghanistan, Hertwig is a National Magazine Award–winning writer and a poet. His debut poetry collection, Slow War (2017), an exploration of the violence of contemporary warfare, the resulting trauma, and a personal search for healing, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Raymond Souster Award, and won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award. 

Hertwig brings this combination of lived experience and keenly developed craft to Juiceboxers, creating a nightmarish world of toxic masculinity and blood sport. The language of the novel is simple and straightforward, and the attention to detail is akin to the writing of Tim O’Brien, yet Plinko’s life takes on an almost hallucinogenic quality that may remind readers of Denis Johnson.

Readers should note: Juiceboxers is, at times, a difficult reading experience, one capable of producing considerable unease and anxiety. This is to the novel’s – and Hertwig’s –credit (though the warning should be heeded). By immersing readers in this world, in Plinko’s fractured, limited awareness, Hertwig has created not only a thorough examination of the state of modern war and those drawn to it, but a rigorous revelation of contemporary male life and the questioning and failures of masculinity that go far beyond the military arena. At its core, Juiceboxers is an account of how a search for home and family can be subverted and shaped into violence and dubious conformity, and how that search can lead to tragedy. Juiceboxers is a difficult but radiant work – essential reading – for those able to face its bleakness.