Late in ”A Hard and Heavy Thing,“ University of Wisconsin-Madison law student Matthew J. Hefti’s debut novel, Levi Hartwig is drinking with his dad in a bar, more than a year after returning from stints as a soldier in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

”We‘re all trying to boil down our meaningless experiences to fit this tiny little conventional, three-act, linear narrative,“ the disconsolate Levi says.

Hefti -- who was raised in Wisconsin, served in Iraq and Afghanistan and makes a cameo appearance in this novel -- appears to share Levi’s skepticism regarding well-meaning efforts to reduce the firsthand experience of war to credible narrative.

Hence the many occasions in ”A Hard and Heavy Thing“ -- structured as a long letter from Levi to his best friend and fellow soldier, in which Levi tries to make sense of their relationship and all they went through -- where Levi self-consciously calls attention to how he breaks the formal rules for writing stories like this one.

Would that Hefti and Levi had broken far more of them.

”A Hard and Heavy Thing“ unwittingly describes the experience of reading this novel, which follows the familiar three-act structure Levi rejects through often overwritten prose and underwritten characters that reinforce the very truisms Hefti tries to avoid. (TNS)