{"id":2051,"date":"2015-02-24T22:58:27","date_gmt":"2015-02-25T06:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2051"},"modified":"2015-02-24T22:58:27","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T06:58:27","slug":"review-the-laughing-monsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2051","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Laughing Monsters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Denis Johnson&#8217;s <em>The Laughing Monsters<\/em> is an exciting, suspenseful, thriller set in Africa.\u00a0 For me, and I suspect most readers, the plot is really a sideline, though. The mood Johnson sustains is much more powerful and interesting.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson&#8217;s Africa is haunted.\u00a0 It&#8217;s haunted by ancient ways of life ruptured by recent horrors.\u00a0 It&#8217;s haunted by the West&#8217;s history of exploitation and recent headless terror over 9\/11 and related unrest.\u00a0 It&#8217;s haunted by Africa&#8217;s homegrown despots and their rapacious hungers.\u00a0 It&#8217;s haunted by poverty, greed, and ambition. These restless spirits howl throughout the whole book.<\/p>\n<p>Importantly, all these ghosts visit our protagonists directly. There are no moments where anyone announces that Imperialism brought about a plot element or haunting detail, but there&#8217;s never any doubt where those elements and details stem from, either. The ghosts are always personal; they touch our anti-hero adventurers as directly as a creepy uncle in a church basement. The unease and guilt swirl throughout the narrative.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a spooky book front to back, and a good thriller to boot.<\/p>\n<p>Strongly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Denis Johnson&#8217;s The Laughing Monsters is an exciting, suspenseful, thriller set in Africa.\u00a0 For me, and I suspect most readers, the plot is really a sideline, though. The mood Johnson sustains is much more powerful and interesting. Johnson&#8217;s Africa is haunted.\u00a0 It&#8217;s haunted by ancient ways of life ruptured by recent horrors.\u00a0 It&#8217;s haunted by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2051"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2053,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions\/2053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}