Aftermath by Patrick Smart - REVIEW
Every so often, a book arrives in my reading pile that is entirely outside my usual orbit. Aftermath, Patrick Smart’s sprawling war-and-peace novel, is exactly that. I should confess at the outset: I am a pacifist, and I rarely choose books where military conflict takes centre stage. Yet something about Aftermath drew me in — and to my surprise, I found myself lingering in its corridors of tension, reflection, and aftermath long after I had closed the final page.
At first glance, Aftermath might appear to be a straightforward war story — paratroopers dropping into enemy fire, crackling radios, the weight of a revolver in a soldier’s hand. But Patrick Smart isn’t writing a soldier’s adventure yarn. He is writing about what happens after. The title itself is the clue. This is less about glory on the battlefield and more about the scar tissue left behind: the fractured psyches, the attempts to find routine after chaos, the sense that violence has bled into everyday life in ways that no discharge papers can erase.
One of the book’s strengths lies in how Smart handles atmosphere. The opening chapter, “On Fire,” drops us straight into a claustrophobic troop plane, filled with the sound of rattling bolts, the churn of engines, and the inner panic of men who know they may not survive the next twenty seconds. The prose is taut, staccato, almost cinematic. I could imagine a director like Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) or Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk) filming it — all tight angles, breathless silence, and sudden eruptions of chaos. But where Smart distinguishes himself is in the aftermath of these scenes: the long silences, the slow return to civilian rooms filled with dust, and the haunting absence that follows adrenaline.
The central figure, Joe Kieslowski, is not painted in broad heroic strokes but in shades of doubt, fatigue, and a quiet, persistent moral compass. He is at once soldier, survivor, and reluctant participant in a world where the line between war and policing blurs uncomfortably. Joe is the lens through which we experience both the external violence of armed conflict and the internal violence of memory and conscience. His interactions — with comrades, with therapists, with civilians — carry the weight of a man trying to navigate equilibrium in a world built on imbalance.
There is, too, an almost noir quality to the narrative once it shifts from the battlefield to the city. Gunfights, stakeouts, and clandestine meetings unfold with a moody intensity reminiscent of Raymond Chandler, yet filtered through the psyche of someone who has seen too much. At times, I felt I was reading a hybrid between a detective thriller and a post-war confessional. Smart seems particularly interested in how institutions — military, police, political — both demand and distort loyalty, leaving individuals to reckon with their complicity.
Thematically, Aftermath asks difficult questions: How does one return from war? Can there be a clean break between soldier and civilian? What does justice look like when weapons and trauma are repurposed for peacetime streets? These aren’t presented as neat philosophical puzzles but as lived contradictions in the lives of his characters. Joe, in particular, embodies the tension between wanting to withdraw and being pulled back in — a man who doesn’t quite belong to peace, yet refuses to belong fully to war either.
Smart’s prose style deserves special mention. It is lean, pared back, and dialogue-driven, yet capable of sudden lyricism. A simple description of dust in a neglected apartment swirls into something haunting, like sunlight caught in old photographs. At other times, his clipped exchanges echo the rapid-fire tension of screenplays. Readers who enjoy immersive, cinematic writing — the kind that lets you hear the boots on the floor and smell the gun oil — will find much to admire.
That said, this is not an easy book. For some readers, especially those unaccustomed to military fiction or uncomfortable with violence, the sheer weight of weaponry, procedure, and confrontation may feel daunting. There are shootouts, tactical manoeuvres, and the ever-present reminder of violence’s cost. But for me, as a pacifist, what carried me through was the author’s refusal to glamorise it. Smart does not celebrate bloodshed; he examines its residue. The scenes of action are gripping, yes, but their true power lies in the pauses that follow — the characters cleaning their weapons in silence, visiting memorials, or wrestling with the hollowness of victory.
Who, then, might find Aftermath compelling? Readers who admired works like Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, or the post-Vietnam disillusionment captured in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, will find resonances here. Film lovers who appreciated the atmospheric tension of Dunkirk, the urban grit of Heat, or even the existential tones of Taxi Driver may also be drawn to the book’s fusion of war and noir. On the other hand, those looking for a straightforward “war novel” with clear heroes and villains may find themselves unsettled. Smart is more interested in blurred lines than battle lines.
The scale of the novel is ambitious — spanning 46 chapters, multiple locations, and a wide cast of characters. At times, this expansiveness can be overwhelming. Some readers may struggle with the density of detail, or feel adrift in the shifting perspectives. Yet even here, there is a certain authenticity. After all, war and its aftermath are not neat narratives; they are sprawling, contradictory, and hard to contain. Smart leans into that chaos, trusting the reader to follow the fragments and piece together meaning.
For me, the greatest achievement of Aftermath is its ability to transform material I normally avoid into something I could not put down. It is not a comfortable book, nor is it meant to be. Instead, it offers a sobering meditation on the costs of conflict — costs paid not only in battle but in the long years that follow.
Patrick Smart has written a novel that is both urgent and reflective, cinematic and intimate. It is a book for readers willing to sit with unease, to explore the shadows of memory and morality, and to witness the messy aftermath of wars both external and internal. I came to it hesitantly, but I leave it deeply impressed.
