It's obviously Didion or Stone (or Greene?) he looks toward here and it's obviously not the novel he writes best. But I liked it and think about it often...I gave it a few months and it's still in my head. Impefrct, yeah. but here it is getting 5 stars...if you like Denis Johnson and hate his goddamn "masterpiece," Tree of Smoke: read this, he's dumber here. That's a good thing.

n  ”All I’m saying is be ready. Be ready to find out that this is Hell.”

“It isn’t Hell. This is all quite real.”

“If it wasn’t real, it wouldn’t be Hell.”

That seemed to get him thinking.

“You do have a vivid world view,” he said.n

I’m honestly not sure what really happened in this story, it was a bizarre sort of fever dream full of suspicion and panic and maybe paranoia. But it was also Will Patton reading Denis Johnson, so I loved it.

The writing is so gorgeous and vivid, I can feel exactly where they are.

n  i moved to the doorway and smoked a cigaret in the barrage of traffic noise. The road narrowed here, and the suicide-macho rattleheaps contended for the only lane, while the pods of the giant frangipanis wept down onto their hoods. n

And things get weirder and weirder. Is she just drunk? Is she feverish with an undiagnosed tropical illness? Has she lost her grip on reality after being questioned? Is she insane? It’s really never clear.

n  ”Stop, wait, stop. Are you talking? Or am I?”

What he’s doing is what I’m doing; what I thought he was doing- is what I am-

Just as when we were loving, honeymooning … There was only one of us …

But if there is only one of us, then I’m alone.n

A dark, cynical, and profound visit to revolutionary Nicaragua. Beautifully written, a confused and authentic voice, lends to some confusion as far as the plot, but it doesn't really matter, it is about the people.

A compelling read, largely due to the unpredictable nature of the story. In essence, this comes in the guise of a literary thriller, and it has some moments of a sense of heightened danger, and it is about survival. But it is survival of the spirit, and our (anti)heroine is desperately clinging to the remnants of her soul after becoming trapped in Nicaragua during sandinista rule, but it's also a hellscape, and this singular voice describes it in vivid detail. The language is poetic and savage and the characters rather heinous but that being said, I admired the heroines tenacity and sardonic sense of humour. I got the sense of her loneliness and desperation and sheer will to make it out alive. Her nihilism and self-deprecating humour burns through the book and I would travel to this hell to have a rum with her. Survival at all costs.