Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #455698 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Guardian
'...a book of extraordinary power, by a writer...whose own endless invention and send of colour are...second to none.'

Scotland on Sunday
`Powerful debut novel...he handles the complicated plot mechanisms
in this storyline beautifully.'

Glasgow Herald
'A powerfully, coolly written novel...reads as directly as if he
had lived Norma's harrowing life himself.'

Customer Reviews

A disappointment for me...........
I am somewhat embarrassed to say this book did little for me.

I had expected that the serious struggles of war would provide a far richer story. I also expected that Norma, as a radio show host providing a voice for the country's suffering population, would play a much bigger role and in far less bland fashion.

I found the novel to be slow and confusing (particularly with the changes in time periods) and full of colourless characters.

It may be unkind of me to be too critical as I see that nearly all other reviewers on the US and UK sites have written highly of this novel. It may therefore be fairer for me to summarise my views by saying this book wasn't for me. 5/10

a brilliant novel, not to be missed
This is just an astonishing novel that deserves wide readership. Set in an unnamed South American country, it describes the chaotic, seemingly unending state of civil war, which few can recall starting, and few can decide if it has finally ended. The story is told through the life of Norma, who has a radio program in which she simply reads the names of the missing, the disappeared, those being sought by wives, children, parents. Norma's voice becomes the most well-known in the country. Hers is the voice of hope and restoration in a country ripped apart by boy soldiers who apparently have no sense of their purpose, other than to kill. It's a country of peasants whose isolated villages are visited by armed insurgents, and their children coerced into the rebel army. It is a novel about love and loss and the anguish of ignorance in an atmosphere of almost surreal paranoia. The terror moves in the city with its unlit streets, and darkened bars, and spies who don't really know why they are spying, or whose side they are really on - if anything can be said to be real in the madness of the country's deterioration. The terror also moves in the jungles where peasants catch snippets of news on brokendown radios or gain often unreliable information from armies passing through. It is a novel about love - the survival of love, the hopes and dreams of lovers separated by the bewildering collapse of the country. A gorgeous, honest book - moving, touching, sad. Please read this truly fine novel whose depth of insight far outshines most books publishers foist on us in these days of the slick and shallow.