Interesting Facts About the State of Arizona

by jeremy-poolman

Bagdad, Arizona, is a town once prosperous but now in decay, a place where the lives of those shackled by age or circumstance are played out against the backdrop of the visible horizon. A weird event attracts the media and puts Bagdad back on the map.

251 pages, Paperback

First published January 6, 1997

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whenever I see a work of fiction with one of these “quirky” titles, I always assume it’s some form of marketing ploy designed to get the reader’s attention. My cynicism, however, doesn’t always prevent me from falling for the trick. It was the unusual title of this book that led me to think “I wonder what that’s about?”

That said, if the title was a marketing ploy, it hasn’t worked in the wider sense, since at the time of writing this 1996 novel has had only one other review on Goodreads.

It turned out to be a bit of an oddball novel, hard to categorise, although I would say it’s quite a light read. It features the lives of a disparate group of characters in a small town in Arizona, as well as a group living on a Navajo reservation. For a novel of 250 pages there’s a fairly large cast, linked by some unusual goings-on. I felt the author was going for humour although this didn’t work for me very often. I made a note that the book gave me precisely two genuine lol moments!

Many of the characters are linked by a sort of longing. With some it’s for a different life away from their small town, for others it’s a longing for marriage or a long-term relationship, or in one case, a longing to escape from one. These scenarios leave the characters with decisions to make.

For about the first 100 pages I thought this was heading for a two-star rating, but I gradually came to identify more with the characters and by the end was quite curious as to how it would all turn out.

Basically, a quirky title for a quirky book. I didn’t dislike it, though I’m not sure I would particularly recommend it either.

[James Tingle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking through my bookshelf yesterday and saw this novel, that I bought from an Oxfam shop about ten years ago and read a while after that, and decided to look it up on here. Surprisingly, no-one has reviewed it yet, even though it came out in 1997, mega ages ago, so I thought I might as well give it it's first GR write up. What attracted me to it at first in that shop was the title- I thought it sounded really peculiar and a bit quirky maybe and then I pulled it out and saw the surreal, gleaming, massive fat strawberry, sat in an arid desert front cover and was sold, especially as it was reasonably cheap as well...
The actual novel itself isn't absolutely mind blowingly good, but it is still a decent read and has small town odd balls milling about, being unusual and a few zany memorable scenes and it generally has a late night indie film feel to it, where not much happens, but you still enjoy watching it slowly unfold whilst sipping at a few cold lagers or strong craft beers perhaps, feeling like you should go to bed, but its nearly three in the morning so what the hell! Not bad at all and surely worth another review one day!

[Ana Borrajo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just ordered this book to reread it. I'd read it for the first time 20 years ago. I was living in Sweden, and this was the last book I hadn't read yet of all the Spanish or English books available in the library of the tiny town where I was living at that time.
The description of Arizona made me very curious, so I bought a trip to Phoenix. I've been living in Arizona since then.
I have vague memories of the book; today is the first time I've found a reference to it. Who would have known this was going to be a life-changing book!