The Stars at Noon

by Denis Johnson

A literary thriller and love story set during the Nicaraguan revolution, from the National Book Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. • Now the basis for a major motion picture

Set in Nicaragua in 1984, The Stars at Noon is a story of passion, fear, and betrayal told in the voice of an American woman whose mission in Central America is as shadowy as her surroundings. Is she a reporter for an American magazine, as she sometimes claims, or a contact person for the anti-war group Eyes of Peace? And who is the rough English businessman she begins an affair with? The two foreigners become entangled in sinister plots and ever-widening webs of corruption, until a desperate attempt to escape the country brings their relationship to a crisis point.

With his customary narrative brilliance, award-winning writer Denis Johnson brings a hellish landscape of moral ambiguity vividly to life.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Novels, Romance, Literary Fiction, Literature, Espionage

192 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 1986

About the author

Poet, playwright and author Denis Johnson was born in Munich, West Germany, in 1949 and was raised in Tokyo, Manila and Washington. He earned a masters' degree from the University of Iowa and received many awards for his work, including a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction (1993), a Whiting Writer's Award (1986), the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from the Paris Review for Train Dreams, and most recently, the National Book Award for Fiction (2007).

Reviews

[Candi · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Morning’s an oven; noon is a star; dusk is a furnace; but the middle of the night, at its worst, is only a hot bath…”

This slim novel, set in 1984 Nicaragua, is my first by Denis Johnson. I’m not sure why I started with this probably lesser-known work, except that I liked the title and the setting. The oppressive heat of war-torn Nicaragua is perfect for a tale like this one. It adds significantly to the stifling and dangerous atmosphere of feeling trapped in a country that is ruled by a revolutionary government with constant threats from counter-revolutionary forces. Add United States involvement to the mix, and you have a boiling hotbed of covert activity.

“I don’t know at what point, maybe it’s as you pass the second or third miserable sugar refinery looking just like a prison, that you realize you’ve been ejected from Paradise. And whatever these stunned, drenched people did to get themselves banished here is an absolute mystery. Like your own mortal error…”

The narrator is about as unreliable as they come, which adds to the mystery of the whole thing. She’s an American, carries a press card, and claims to work for a magazine. She also ‘admits’ to working for a peace organization. But right from the start we see that she exchanges sex for money, so it would be safe perhaps to add ‘prostitute’ to her resume as well. It’s unclear if this is her true ‘vocation’ but rather a survival tactic in order to raise enough cash to get herself out of this Hell. One thing is for certain however – she’s one clever and resourceful heroine. When she falls for one of her clients, an English businessman with a questionable resume of his own, the book takes off into high gear. I didn’t expect a survival sort of story, but that’s what this is at its best. It is fast-paced and a bit perplexing (which I’m guessing is intentional – this is a militant corner of the world with a number of dubious characters, after all.) Oh, and I’ve hinted at the romance of course. This is a messy, convoluted kind of love story. No need to duck and cover from cloying sentimentalism here.

“In his own way he’s a beautiful human, perhaps he’s a hallucination, he’s no easier to credit, in this obscene heat and dust, than a frail white snowflake. We’re trying to outrun the Devil and everybody else…”

How does one take a dark and murky plot set in a land of decay and turmoil and turn it into something poetic? Something reeking of desperation and depravity and transform it with beautiful language? I’m saving the extra star for one that I anticipate will inspire me even more. The voice of the narrator was just a tad bit detached for my liking, but that’s really just a feeble whine at this point. I’m a fan!

“We can’t remember our sins here. We don’t know who we used to be.”

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second rather obnoxious narrator in a row - this time a woman. She claims to be a journalist for an American paper but is working as a whore in Nicaragua in 1984 when we meet her. Here she meets an Englishman working for an oil company who has incurred the wrath of the Contras and the Americans by telling the Sandinista's where the oil fields are. The author forges the character of his two central protagonists around national clichés - the insecure bravado of the American abroad and the sterilising formality of the Brit abroad. It's a device which works really well because he works in a lot of subtlety to these generalisations. Less likeable for me was the noir voice the author deploys for his narrator, hard-edged and cynical and familiar to us from heaps of private detective films. The author did it well but it's not a voice I find very engaging. It's a novel that takes a while to burst into life but this is what happens at about the half way point when the two characters are on the run and seeking to escape Nicaragua. I ended up really enjoying it. Thanks to Candi for putting this on my radar. Definitely an author I'll be reading again.

[J. Kent Messum · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you hear the name Denis Johnson, you inevitably think of Jesus' Son, the book that put the man on the map. But 'The Stars At Noon' is another masterful work from a true talent that should not be missed.

This is a novel about being trapped out in the open; one American woman's paranoid escape attempt from a corrupt country while she tries to stem the erosion of both her sanity and soul. Set in Nicaragua in the 1980s, we experience the story through the main character as she is allowed to exist within the country, but forbidden to exit it. Supposedly a correspondent, her actual background and reasons to be in Nicaragua appear shady at best, as are the majority of the people she comes in contact with. Her entrapment/abandonment starts subtly, but it isn't long before she must try to flee using whatever means necessary: sex, manipulation, crime, bribery and beggary. The desperation and dismay feels so prominent on the page, it's enough to make you want to avoid ever traveling to any region in the world that has an ounce of instability.

It's no secret that Denis Johnson holds rank as one of the best writers in the business, and he delivers another compelling and unnerving piece of fiction that should be on everyone's must-read list. 'The Stars At Noon' is a walk in a frightened, yet cunning woman's shoes. It makes for a thrilling and uncomfortable story about being stuck on foreign soil while being increasingly perceived as an enemy by people who are more than capable of killing you. The lengths we will go to when backed into a corner is a hard swallow, particularly when we all know it's true.

Highly recommend.

[Corto Maltese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ονειρικό, κλειστοφοβικό, δυστοπικό παρόλο που λαμβάνει χώρα στην Νικαράγουα του εμφυλίου, των σαντινίστας και των κόντρας, είναι γραμμένο όμως το 1984 (την χρονιά του μεγάλου αδελφού) και αυτό έχει την σημασία του...δύο αντιήρωες-ένα στέλεχος μια πετρελαϊκής εταιρείας που έκανε το θανάσιμο λάθος να πει την αλήθεια και αυτό όπως πάντα έχει το κόστος του...και μια δημοσιογράφος που παράλληλα είναι και ιερόδουλος, με το αλκοόλ να αποτελεί την μόνη προσωρινή διέξοδο τους, ερωτεύονται με πάθος, ίσως από φόβο, ίσως από την ανάγκη της επιβίωσης, προσπαθούν μάταια να δραπετεύσουν, μα το μόνο που καταφέρνουν είναι με τα χέρια τους κρατημένα να βυθίζονται ολοένα και βαθύτερα σε μια αόρατη δίνη...
<<Δεν έχεις άλλη επιλογή>>
<< Δεν έχω>>
<<Είμαστε στο 1984>>
<<Ακριβώς>>, είπε εκείνος.
<<Έγινε πραγματικά αυτή η συζήτηση; Η μήπως είναι συζήτηση που κάνω πάντα εδώ στην κόλαση; Και μήπως η κόλαση είναι απλώς αυτή η μοναδική συζήτηση που οδηγεί στην χρονολογία 1984; στην αναγνώριση της απόλυτης φυλάκισης μου, στο αναπόδραστο του είναι μου; Μήπως η ζωή μου όλη αποτελείται απ' αυτόν το έναν και μοναδικό διάλογο σε μια απεριόριστη ποικιλία παραλλαγών;>>

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually, the book that really set me straight was Denis Johnson's The Stars At Noon. Johnson is one of those names I've always carried with me, and so one evening when my boyfriend and I were having dinner, and I got an itch to scour the Halfprice Bookstore shelves, when I saw this one title on the shelf, what with its appealing cover and description, and an alluring randomly-read paragraph from the middle of the book, I decided to take it home with me.

Best decision I could have made. I started reading, and wow. Now, I tried Johnson once before with Already Dead and was less than enchanted. Granted, Johnson's subject matter is really not for the faint of heart, but dear God. The thrill of the perspective he offers, a basic survival story in a completely foreign territory but without losing over to lengthy description and standoffishness in regards to his characters in this foreign place, was freaking rock solid. Not only that, but I made one of the coolest discoveries I have ever made while reading - I found the lyrics from the first verse to a song from my favorite Sonic Youth album, Daydream Nation. The song is called "The Sprawl", and it was actually one of the first Sonic Youth songs I ever heard, and that convinced me to check them out (well, that and the irresistable Madonna cover 'Into the Groove(y). Some of the sentences in the verse were very distinctive, others not so much. But they stuck out like sore thumbs of the best sort to me while I scoured the first fifty pages. Turns out it was lifted from the book, and that just makes me like Sonic Youth even more.

Aside from that, this story of human degradation and what lengths people will turn to when they have no other choices is completely engrossing. Enter love story? And you have a complete winner. If I met that book in a dark alley, it would totally kick my ass. I really wanted to include an excerpt in here, and even though certain passages really rocked my socks off, I had a hard time pulling it from the context of the book. It is just all so good.

In short, this book gave me a pulse again. It inspired me to actually be fair with the stack of to-reads I've been holding at bay, and for the sake of actually accomplishing them, I am not even going to list them here. It seems I jinx myself whenever I declare lists or to-do's, as if by nature of acknowledging that they are in my future I am also dismissing them at the same time. Boo! No more!

[Lee Klein · Rating 3 out of 5]

The single lingering impression is that I need to read the rest of Denis Johnson's novels. I mean, I've read the great Jesus' Son three times, a middling book of essays Seek, only really remembering one about Burning Man, and his posthumous story collection The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, which I liked well enough. I've known the titles of his novels for more than a dozen years but haven't been moved to acquire them until now, always expecting I guess that they wouldn't approach Jesus' Son and I'd be a little disappointed, like with lesser DeLillo novels (Mao II, eg).

This one starts wonderfully, audaciously, narrated by a female journalist in 1984 Nicaragua looking for "the exact dimensions of Hell," a line on page 15 that triggered immediate recognition that jumped up to amazement and excitement once a line of dialogue appeared in which the narrator is asked if she's for sale and a little later a line about how this was the only part that turned her on. I googled the lyrics to The Sprawl by Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth acknowledges on a page for the song on their site that Denis Johnson influenced the song, so it's not like I discovered the lyrics' provenance but reading pre-dawn on the train to work and happening on these lines was exhilarating, thinking about the cool complexity of Kim Gordon quoting dialogue written by Denis Johnson writing in the guise of a female narrator. After running into the "does fuck you sound simple?" line on page 25, looking for "and he was candy all over" essentially served as the primary narrative drive/plot propulsion in a novel that at most was driven by language and intermittent reemergence of urgency to change money and get to the border with Costa Rica. (Tip for writers: getting an era-defining band to include a few cool lines from your novel in one of the most memorable songs on a masterpiece they'll record and release four years after publication of your book is definitely one way to improve your novel's reception/appreciation in posterity.)

Anyway, to answer the question asked early on in both the song and the book: the narrator is for sale, but she hooks up for free with a beautiful Englishman oil executive ("everything about him was candy," pg 95 or so). The narrator observes the world in an attractive, swervy manner -- the narrative voice generally reminiscent of Grace Paley's or more so Jane Bowles of Two Serious Ladies. The book also intermittently seems to fall apart into meandering meaningless dialogue, all of it cool but not so engaging, with only occasional historical or regional interest or insight.

I traveled in Nicaragua in 1995, somehow only eleven years after this was set, and the descriptions for the most part jibed, especially diesel exhaust in Managua, the general sense of threat in Matagalpa, the glory of the Masaya volcano, and the pier at the marshy border with Costa Rica. It's all a little exaggerated here for comic effect and isn't all that sensitive to war-torn Central America and its inhabitants etc but it's always well-observed, which is the very loose theme of the book, the power of observation, something like that, a paraphrase of one of those poems the narrator likes to quote by William "Something" Merwin, not that it matters much -- whatever suggestion of a lesson this novel may offer seems very much secondary to its setting and sensibility. Ultimately, this isn't really a "necessary" read but I'm glad I read it -- would only truly recommend it to DJ completists and/or Sonic Youth fanatics.

For those interested in images of the Sonic Youth lyrics appearing in their native state, free and in the wild, here ya go:
https://twitter.com/litfunforever/sta...

[Makis Dionis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Μανάγκουα, τυλιγμένη από μια ανάσα ζοφερή, γεμάτη δέος.
Νικαράγουα κ όλο το ντελίριο του τροπικού , ανάμεσα στους Σαντινίστας κ στους Κόντρας, σε ένα ταξίδι ανέχειας, τρέλας κ εξωτισμου

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a re-read for me as part of my ongoing project to read all of Johnson’s novels and poetry in roughly publication order. I say “roughly” because I got slightly side-tracked by his poetry collections and finished them a bit ahead of schedule. The novels will all come in the right order. “The Stars At Noon” was Johnson’s third novel (after Angels and Fiskadoro), first published in 1986.

This is not a novel to read if you like everything tied up neatly at the end. We are deliberately held at a distance from the characters (who don’t have names) and their stories (which are shrouded in ambiguity - is our narrator a reporter, an employee of an organisation called Eyes For Peace, whatever that might be, or a prostitute, for example?). And yet we are strangely close to their thoughts and emotions. This creates an atmosphere all of its own.

It is 1984 and we are in Nicaragua. It is a grim place to be and it’s a mark of Johnson’s writing that he can always make you feel the dirt and squalor of the places he writes about. The review at themodernnovel.org finishes like this: ”It is all entirely murky, as grim if not more so than Angels and leaves you at the end with a nasty taste in your mouth.” Our narrator wants to leave the country and sees an opportunity when she meets an English man. They set off together for the border, pursued by, possibly, the CIA because of something the English man might or might not have done.

In my original review, I noted that one of my favourite things about Johnson’s novels is his use of language (when we see his early life as a poet come to the fore). Here’s a few phrases that made my me stop in my tracks and go back to re-read them: ”Making love with him was like passing through a patch of fog . . .”, “As soon as the first drop of dawn dilutes the blackness…”, “…where souls were being branded with the shapes of their hope…”, “The sunlight lay like money on the jungle floor”. And, as I’ve already said, he has an uncanny knack of capturing the dirt and grime of both the physical environment and his characters situations.

A fairly depressing story with poetic writing that captures an atmosphere brilliantly.

ORIGINAL REVIEW

More of a novella than a novel, this is a story of intrigue and squalor in Nicaragua in 1984. It is never quite clear why the central character is there or why the English man she meets is there. Or why anyone is where they are! But they are and they go to some other places and it is all a bit strange. But in a good way! The language the author uses is probably the best thing about the book: it is hard to read about the heat and the filth without starting to feel uncomfortable yourself. I have to admit I read Denis Johnson books more for his language than his stories.

[D'Ailleurs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ομολογώ ότι το "Φισκαντόρο" δεν με ξετρέλανε αλλά αυτό είναι μολογουμένως ένα μικρό διαμαντάκι. Δανειζόμενος στοιχεία από Γκράχαμ Γκρήν (κυρίως), Έρικ Άμπλερ και Τζών ΛεΚαρέ ο Τζόνσον φτιάνει ένα κυνικό δράμα με στοιχεία περιπέτειεας με φόντο στην Νικαράγουα που έχει όλα τα στερεότυπα της νοτιοαμερικάνικης δυστοπίας: παρακρατικοί, παρακολούθηση, βορειοαμερικάνικα νήματα, επαναστατικός στρατός, φτώχια, εξαθλίωση και εκμιδενισμός της ανθρώπινης αξιοπρέπειας. Και παρόλο που ο Τζόνσον δεν φτάνει ούτε το δαχτυλάκι του Γκρήν, καταφέρνει χωρίς να μπλέκεται σε περιττές πολιτικές αναλύσεις και φτηνό μελόδραμα (οι κακοί αμερικανοί φταίνε για όλα) να αναδείξει την παράνοια της όλης κατάστασης και το δράμα των πρωταγωνιστών. Σίγουρα όχι ένα βιβλίο που θα ξεχωρίσει από το σωρό αλλά όποιος το ανακαλύψει δεν θα χάσει.

[Tory · Rating 1 out of 5]

[1st read from 28/6/2022 to 30/6/2022] — 1⭐️

— i recently read a young adult book about someone wanting to marry at age 18 after their fiancé proposed to them right after confessing to cheating… and yet this was, in so many ways, worse than that.

disgustingly pretentious, desperately trying to be something it’s not and at times, oddly racist, with just the right tint of a white complex savior… literary fiction at its worst.

[Read By RodKelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sooooooo good!

[Marc Nash · Rating 4 out of 5]

A study of self-destruction in an unusual setting. Which particular sphincter of the earth do self-destructive people go to to play out their neuroses? Why a war zone of course. In this case the setting is Nicaragua in 1984, ruled by the Sandinista, undermined by the CIA backed Contras. The narrator is an American woman, her self-destructive behaviour means we aren't sure if she's a spy, a prostitute, black marketeer (in currency), a journalist; the relationship she forms with a British businessman, initially she says is faceless, that he has no features other than his spectacles, but after demanding 50 Bucks for their first act of copulation, then turns into a seeming genuine love, although the Damoclean sword of betrayal hangs over them both continually. Hot, sweaty, dusty, in a land that doesn't work, the atmosphere is brilliantly done.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even when I’m not totally in love with a Denis Johnson book, I’m still obsessed with it because it’s Denis Johnson.

[George K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Το δεύτερο βιβλίο του Ντένις Τζόνσον που διαβάζω φέτος, αν και λιγότερο καλό από το Άγγελοι, σίγουρα καλό γενικότερα. Πειστικοί χαρακτήρες, εξαιρετικές περιγραφές της Νικαράγουας του 1984, με τις φτωχές γειτονιές, το τροπικό κλίμα με την υγρασία, τις βροχές, τον καυτό ήλιο, τα διάφορα έντομα, με τις κόντρες των... Κόντρας και των Σαντινίστας, με τα διάφορα παιχνίδια των Αμερικάνων με το πετρέλαιο και την πολιτική και, τέλος, με τον παρακμιακό σοσιαλισμό με τις ελλείψεις τροφίμων και άλλων ειδών. Όσον αφορά την γραφή, απλά εξαιρετική.

[Aether Real · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book just kept building up my already existing internal scream, the further this book went the more my internal scream intensified, the more the anxiety built up. This book is all emotional insanity and anxiety and frustration and defeat.
This book ended and I was left with this unending build up of anxiety and frustration.
A great story that I couldn't decide if I liked or hated through out the entire thing, same with the characters. It just made the story and the characters so human and real.
Unsure if I can recommend this, but it is well written and I'm left with a feeling of absolute uncertainty, so if you like that sort of feeling then maybe you'll like this story?

[Jay Sandover · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a huge Johnson fan, but The Stars at Noon is a bad novel. It's pretty gross about a few things: women, socialism, Central Americans. To name just a few. This is tempered by the inversion at the heart of the novel's Hell. It is a Hell where good deeds are punished. I'm bummed it's so bad, since it's the most overtly religious of his novels. It provides a lot of material for the idea I'm chasing. I marked at least a dozen passages about fate. The idea is this: Johnson's prose turns most lyrical when it is working spiritual themes about fate and chance and trapped-ness (both when he's being straight and when he's making a mockery, as he is a lot of the time here).

The last line is pretty staggering.

Holy Jesus, what this guy must have done in his time on Earth... To be put here with his dreams, but not himself, made substance.

There are bits of direct quotation of Merwin throughout the book. I don't know Merwin well enough to know if the line is lifted or a riff from him or neither.

[Eric Cartier · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read out of order over the years and this was it, my final Denis Johnson book. All for the best, perhaps, because reading more of Kafka's letters and the early John Hawkes novels prepared me for this vision of hell on Earth. It's 1984, war is on in Nicaragua, and a U.S. woman whose name and reason for being there remain unknown is trapped and plunging into deeper trouble. There are elements of absurd Kafkaesque inertia and unnerving Hawkes atmospheres (like a shot-in-the-back-whilst-sluggishly-running nightmare) at play here. Everyone is fallen or falling, every interaction is transactional, things are falling apart, and no one is seeking transcendence of any kind; it's almost down to raw survival, with a veil of civilization atop it. This is Johnson, though, so there are moments of grace and humor, lines of great poetic vibrancy, and glimpses of redemption and a deeper meaning for human existence. If you dug Fiskadoro or Seek, you'll find this worth your time.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[allison · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually adore Denis Johnson, but this one just wasn't doing it for me. Shows its age (written in '86) in an unfavorable way. Also, one of the least convincing female narrators I've ever read. (Though maybe that was the point...?)

[Constantinos Capetanakis · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5*
Ένα μέτριο βιβλίο ενός σπουδαίου συγγραφέα.
Μετά τα καταπληκτικά "Train dreams", "Jesus' son" και ¨Η γενναιοδωρία της γοργόνας¨ η ανάγνωση του "Τα Αστέρια του απομεσήμερου" άφησε μόνο την πεποίθηση ότι ο Τζόνσον έγραφε καλά ακόμα και όταν έγραφε άσχημα, όπως εδώ.
Μία ημιτελής και διάφανη ιστορία στη Νικαράγουα των Σαντινίστας, μία ανύπαρκτη, σχεδόν, πλοκή και μία αίσθηση ότι αυτός που γράφει βρίσκεται σε ένα high που τον εμποδίζει να δει και να γράψει τα πράγματα κάπως καθαρά. Όποιος έχει δει το "Salvador" ή το "Under fire" καταλαβαίνει περί τίνος πρόκειται. Η Νικαράγουα των Σαντινίστας αποτυπώνεται γλαφυρά και πειστικά, αλλά οι δύο κεντρικοί χαρακτήρες και οι ενοχές που υποτίθεται κουβαλάνε όχι. Ο Τζόνσον δεν είναι Γκράχαμ Γκρην και δεν μπορεί να αποτυπώσει τόσο καλά την επίδραση των Τροπικών στην ψυχή των ηρώων του.
Αυτό δεν αλλάζει σε τίποτα το τι κατάφερε ο Τζόνσον με τα τρία βιβλία που αναφέρω στην αρχή.

[michal k-c · Rating 2 out of 5]

a rare kind of novel in that it's not great but there are also so many sentences that are evidence of a pretty superior literary mind at work. having read a few of the pieces in Johnson's SEEK, i would have much rather preferred he stuck to the journalistic plan on this subject. i guess what i'm saying is if you are going to make your allegorical journey through a metaphorical Hell set in a real historical place in a real historical time (with a fairly straightforward history imo), you gotta be either 1) extremely sensitive to that subject matter or 2) willing to die for whatever convictions you're laying down. doesn't really seem like Johnson is either of these on this one. don't worry still love my boy i'll rep Train Dreams till i die

[Chris Molnar · Rating 4 out of 5]

When the words are so idiosyncratic beautiful & meaningful it doesn't matter if the plot makes no sense. I kept getting pages ahead of myself lost in the Writing and losing track of what was happening, which isn't much anyway. That split between a silly plot and gripping true sensorials is perfect for a (Claire) Denis movie so I'm very excited for that adaptation to come out in a week or two.

Not an all-timer like Train Dreams, Tree of Smoke, Jesus' Son or "Largesse", but is encouraging me to finally dig deeper into the back catalog

[Aisha]

Robert Pattison and Margaret Qualley are gonna be in this movie, EEK

[Ericka Clou · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love some of Denis Johnson's work: Train Dreams is one of my favorite books ever and deserved the Pulitzer the year it came out; Jesus Son is a classic as well. I just found the style and plot of this novel very difficult, and as a result, I increasingly lost interest. If it had been longer, I would have given up. I still preferred it to the horrors of Angels.

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denis Johnson loves to torture me with despicable characters. Loves it! A lot of it reminds me of the stuff he ran into in various essays from his book Seek. It is hard to relate to the goings on of the plot because of the lack of accountability. The cause and effect is either non-existent or so completely skewed that I find myself scratching my head. The exchanges between the Interturismo, the Sub-tenente, border guards, everyone has some strange control that the characters lack and are able to put the characters through whatever they want.

It is striking insomuch as I, as an American, cannot follow the causation. It paints a picture of the trials in developing nations that is extremely bleak, almost to the point of unbelievability. If the characters felt more believable then the book would have been somewhat harrowing. But, like a lot of Denis Johnson's writing on his time spent abroad in places like Liberia, I find the happenings absolutely frustrating and hard to comprehend.

His prose itself is fantastic and bites right to the heart, I only wish I felt more compassion for those in the story. I might be the only person on Earth that prefers The Name of the World to anything else he has written. I have a lot of his books to go though.


-J

p.s. I can't help but feel that she has a way out in the end, and instead of taking it, decides to don the scarlet letter.

[Mike Polizzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johnson's view of Nicaragua in the Sandanista uprising. As expected-- the writing is exquisite. The plot is tight and moves fast, not waiting to answer questions, but allows the vagueness of the situation to unsettle the reader. The truth is malleable: is the protagonist a former aid worker, turned reporter, turned prostitute, a con artist, or something else entirely. The only thing that seems real-- even in its wartime surreality is Nicaragua.
A number of lines from the book have been excerpted for The Sprawl by Sonic Youth-- kind of strange to come across.
The quotes from WS Merwin added an interesting touchstone-- on the whole it feels like an excellent piece of reporting disguised as a novel of political intrigue.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an odd little book. Everything else I have read by Denis Johnson I have loved. This one, not so much. I saw flashes of the genius with whom I have a huge man-crush. Then again, even with a book as spare as this, I found myself skimming whole passages.

[Ezra Lacroix · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Ellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 on a scale with train dreams. doesn't even come close to train dreams but the writing is just as good. I went back to reread so many lines. Just a bit nihilistic for me, which i don't mind usually. This just felt like a bit much, and i didn't find their love story all that compelling. I did love the ambiguity and the atmosphere of it all. again, gotta be up there as one of the greatest contemporary writers. Plus leave it to DJ to write such a profoundly depresso conclusion so as to top all depresso conclusions

[gigi maimuna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like if I paid more attention to this book I would’ve really enjoyed it. I liked the way it was written—how it threw u directly into the main characters head w absolutely ZERO context… but also I feel like I didn’t really know what was going on most of the time. But maybe that’s the point?? It was enjoyable to read (albeit confusing