muy bien escrito pero muy irregular, un buen principio, un nudo insoportable y un final fantástico así que me quedo sin saber bien que pienso

I’m so grateful for Didion and her writing. Her style is one that is lyrical and beautiful. Here she tells a tale of privilege and power and ignorance. One that is set in Latin America and is about the white people that move there thinking they’ll change the world or do some good but end up not doing much at all. Her prose is just gorgeous and the story she tells here is haunting and sad and beautiful. I’m really glad I discovered Didion. She’s a real treasure!

A lofty view

Joan Didion is a great writer and this is a good read. It gives a lofty view of a Latin American country in a state of semi permanent revolution. I didn't quite believe any of the characters though. Too much seemed to happen to them for such a short book. It felt like two novels at least squeezed into one. Still the writing makes you stand back and admire.

“But it’s all the same in the end.” This novel left me with a lot to say about it and speechless at the same time. The ending is told to us in the beginning, and it isn’t a shock or surprise, but in my opinion is still left for us to decide. Almost nothing is spelled out for you in this novel and the majority of characters range from pathetically sad to someone you would kick out of your house for getting too drunk at a Christmas party. However, something that is spelled out to us is that who we know a person to be is often the version we choose to know that makes us feel better about things. Were the characters as terrible as the narrator shows us they were or is this way of making herself feel better that once she goes all that will be left of her is the version that other choose they knew? One thing I always love about reading Didion is that her novels seem to run. They’re exhilarating start to finish even with the depressing subject matter. She also never seems to underestimate the intelligence of her readers and trusts us to understand what she’s trying to say instead of telling us what she’s trying to say. The one thing I wish we got to see was more of Marin and how she viewed the world, as she was a compelling character to me, but I understand why we could not see more of her and her own motives from the point of views of who was telling us the story.

This was my first time reading Didion and it seems my expectations were too high or perhaps misinformed. I was anticipating wonderful, insightful, witty prose but got run-on, hard to follow sentences one after another that led nowhere. I don't usually mind plotless books but this honestly felt like a waste of time. I'm looking forward to reading her other books though - if something positive was needed to mention, the characters were believably unlikable in their self-obsessed, vapid privileged bubble. Perhaps I'm not used to her style of writing - perhaps I just don't "get" it.

3 1/2 stars. Written in no nonsense prose... Like the way I think. Here are the facts... Let me reiterate key points. But let me tell the story at my pace, regardless of if it is linear. You will understand in the end. In the end, when we reach our destination, you will recognize the roads we drove, the reason for the detours.

Kind of depressing though. Hopeless lives, striving for connections that don't quite ever reach. Longing and loneliness and self delusions.

Didion's writing here lends itself easily to parody, but I still found it fierce as eff. And I didn't even pick this up for a good reason - I read somebody was making a movie of it, starring Christina Hendricks.

I really feel like the fictionalized setting provides a good metaphor for how woefully out of touch most Americans (I include myself) are when it comes to world history and politics, without annoying overstatement.

Quick read, too.

These characters are a little too cool and distant for my taste.