Review: Nothing Significant to Report, by Dario Nustrini

‘War is hell,’ Union Civil War General William Sherman once famously said, a quote also archly paraphrased in 1987 anti-war film Full Metal Jacket. 

With its biographical soldier’s eye view of the NZ Army from basic training on, Dario Nustrini’s page-turning Nothing Significant to Report shares plenty of similarities to Kubrick’s iconic epic. Just with most of the thoughtful bits taken out. 

Instead, it puts everything through a lens more akin to the Alternative Commentary Collective, with a breezy, blunt, sometimes boorish style that fixes its sights firmly on comedy. 

Ultimately it makes for an intriguing reading experience. Against a landscape of countless famous novels that critique the awfulness of war, this plucky little contribution is in many ways their counterpoint, almost trying to indoctrinate you into considering a career in the military instead. It is, for sure, a fresh literary perspective. 

The book starts with vividly rendered, sometimes laugh out loud funny anecdotes about being a cadet. Here Nustrini demonstrates that he’s a natural raconteur, and it’s by far the book’s most effective sequence. His unvarnished accounts of what ‘Basic’ is really all about can be thrilling and a little troubling in equal measure, as you’re thrust into the action in visceral ways. Amongst frostbite-inducing, sub-zero conditions, endless push-ups for punishment and stock standard dehumanising drill sergeants, Nustrini somehow manages to find new narrative ground thanks to a likable, laconic Kiwi perspective that turns it all into something interesting and entertaining rather than just another sortie through well-trodden territory. 

And as a reader, you eventually share in his pride as he makes it to the other side. He casts the brutality and toxic masculinity more as a challenge to be conquered rather than a practice to be criticised, and helps you better understand why the Basic Training experience can sometimes be the making of people. It's a taut, focused section, authentically written exactly as you’d expect a soldier to speak.

Unfortunately, from there, things lose a bit of momentum and shape. Stories about training exercises around the world amble along episodically. Finally, the author gets stationed in Iraq, and suddenly the tone jarringly shifts as he quickly realises that modern warfare in a foreign culture is far more complex, stressful and, indeed, hellish than wargames had led him to believe.  

But to be fair, at least Nustrini keeps this downbeat conclusion brief, perhaps having the self-awareness to sense that getting too deeply philosophical doesn’t marry up with the colloquial and comical stories that preceded it.

Sure, it’s a bit crude and crass at times, more Stripes than Catch 22. But despite being a little uneven and unsophisticated, Nothing Significant to Report is also refreshingly unpretentious – slight but mostly fun and highly readable, the kind of thing destined to end up deservedly well-thumbed on a bookshelf at the bach.

And with war a bigger part of the geopolitical conversation than it has been for many years, it’s now a timely read too. Ultimately it serves as an immersive reminder of the amazing comradery and on-going relevance of the NZ Army. And in that context alone, Nothing Significant to Report might just be a little more significant than it initially appears.

Reviewed by Chris Long