This was not one of Johnson's strongest novels. I believe it was his third. Published in 1986 it contains the voice of an American female trying to get out of Nicaragua during the revolution in 1984. The first part of the novel (the first 20 or 30 pages) contained some very moving, beautiful, interesting, and magical sentences. However theses types of sentences were less frequently found throughout the rest of the book.

I liked the ending - very fitting.

Example sentences found in the first part:

"You have the kind of good manners that eventually get you killed."
"I wanted to know the exact dimensions of Hell." (When asked why she was there.)
"'Are you for sale?' 'I am press.' 'We're all press.' 'Then we're all for sale.'"
"We can't remember our sins here. We don't know who we used to be."
"Making love with him was like passing through a patch of fog."
"I could walk through hours like doorways in the middle of the night."

Beautiful. ( )

The Stars at Noon appears to be one of DJ's least read works, and that is a shame. DJ is a very masculine writer, so his use of a female voice takes some getting used to. But once I settled in, I found this tale of the political and moral confusion of a female American journalist and an English executive in Sandinista-era Nicaragua extremely compelling. There is a strong resemblance to Graham Greene's spy stories, but with a harsher edge. ( )

It is 1984 in Nicaragua under the government of the Sandinistas. The story is told through the voice of an American woman who might, or might not, be a reporter or a contact person for an NGO, but she keeps herself solvent prostituting herself to foreigners, largely in the InterContinental hotel, but also giving her favours to a couple of government officials who have influence over her life and documents. She (we never learn her name), in trouble herself with the withdrawal of protection from her government friends, befriends an Englishman (whom she first beds for $50) who is on the run from shady forces involving the secret police of Costa Rica and the CIA for information he had passed, to Nicaragua, concerning potential oil fields. The intrigue deepens and the two of them set out to drive south to the border to try to cross over into Costa Rica to escape, with the CIA and CR secret police dogging their heels.

This is not nearly as sophisticated, complex, polished or ambitious as Johnson’s Tree of Smoke, but some themes from the latter are apparent, e.g. the sheer unreliability and unpredictability of social and institutional bodies, organizations, connections (“…everybody sells everybody out down here. They can’t afford not to; it’s basic, that’s the situation. If you hang to even one little tiny scruple it’ll be the death of you, I promise. This is Hell, it’s Hell, how many times do you have to be told?”); the closed, clandestine agenda of secret organizations imposing their own rules and own reality; the utter fragility of life that can be snatched on a whim; the failure of social organizations.

Not bad, but time much better spent on Tree of Smoke.