Product Description

This novel is a comic tour around the mores and manners of contemporary Californian society. Depicting the collapse of the last American frontier, it presents a group of strange, ghostly and complex figures where the wierdness and richness of their minds is brought to the fore.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #626482 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Customer Reviews

amazing, beautifully written zen thriller
another gem from the greatest living writer in the world. california redwood forests, new age mysticism, wannabe suicide rescued from water, rolling fog, comic hitmen, a witch, father-son torment plus johnson's trademark, simple, stark prose style which just rolls and riffs on one ghostly, poetic sentence after another. the structure is flawless, the switching of voices and use of flashback well executed...this novel has it all...quite brilliant.. -Nick Johnstone

Tough Guys
Not sure what Johnston was up to here. The similarities to Mailer's Tough Guys Don't Dance are huge: marijuana patches, seances, spirits, adultry, murder. Paying homage? Except the setting is the west coast instead of the east. The results are the same; is this the point? Really enjoyed it though. Amazing that he took more pages than Mailer!

Not even one star - none.
I forced myself through the first twenty pages. There was nothing in it of human concern. Different consciousnesses springing out of the author's tangled mind. Words put together out of thin air - meaning nothing. This book is so bad I wonder... Are we so poor of spirit now?