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De Lachende Monsters (2014)

by Denis Johnson(Favorite Author)

3.32 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

9023487397 (ISBN13: 9789023487395)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

De Bezige Bij

review 1: Joy Williams recently published a review in the NYTBR in which she related an anecdote about the woman seated next to her on an airplane who groused that Denis Johnson doesn't like his characters very much -- right before her kid spilled orange juice on both Williams and herself. A couple of weeks later, a letter to the editor complained that Williams had been unkind. She was just being factual. And maybe a tiny bit frustrated. If you want likable characters, you should probably stick with YA. But let's at least agree that Denis Johnson is a master novelist who doesn't just write about the darker reaches of the human soul -- he reveals them. This novel, set in post-9/11 Africa, takes us on a trip from Freetown, Sierra Leone (Graham Greene territory, and Johnson is Greene's... more legitimate heir) into the interior, to Uganda and on to the even rougher terrain of Congo, with its marauding militias, mine-poisoned waters, and struggling, fleeing villagers. Roland Nair, our narrator and guide on this journey, is a traitor and a spy. He's supposed to by spying on his friend Michael Adriko, a native African and erratic but formidable commando and soldier of fortune. The motives that propel this journey are a bit difficult to sort, particularly after Nair falls for Adriko's latest fiancee. This one is smart, beautiful, and the daughter of an American base commander. The base is a secret one, located in Africa, and by the time these three wanderers reach it, none of them is in very good shape. Adriko, whose careless wasting of the life of an African woman is the very depth of moral bankruptcy, gains some ground in the end while Nair seems to flake out completely. The fiancee, wisely, decides to head home for the States. Eventually this weird-ass buddy picture develops an ending that could almost seem, in some slight way, redemptive. Except that you more than suspect that these two are going to go back out there and do even more shitty, reprehensible things. And if they did, you'd keep reading about it. You'll never go to any of these places. You'll never want to. But Denis Johnson takes you there, tells you exactly what it looks like and feels like and smells like and what everybody says. And you'll believe that it all happened just like this. In a place where the likable are just not that likely to turn up.
review 2: Denis Johnson's writing is lush and poetic, though to me, his characters are sometimes lacking. I loved Train Dreams with its dreamy prose and travel. Nair is traveling to Sierra Leone to meet up with an old friend, Michael, who may not be a friend. It seems that the two of them have gotten into trouble before, and it is soon clear that this meeting is also involving making a very dangerous deal and screwing over some very dangerous people. As in Train Dreams, The Laughing Monsters was beautifully told, I just found it hard to connect to the characters and their activities. less

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