Salvador: Amazon.ca: Joan Didion: Books

Product Description

From Library Journal

Didion's 1983 volume captured "the terror and unpredictability permeating the El Salvadorean scene," said LJ's reviewer (LJ 3/1/83). Though political events in El Salvador are no longer in the public eye, this serves as a chronicle of a dark chapter in that country's tumultuous history.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

With an Introduction by Tim Adams
'A writer of haunting power and global vision who sees a world on the edge of nervous breakdown and is not afraid to deliver the news' Sunday Telegraph
'Didion is one of America's finest literary stylists, most penetrating reporters and acutest critics' The Times
'A precise, humane and meticulously truthful writer' Zadie Smith
'She is one of the true talents of our age' Colm Toibin
'It is quite impossible to deny the artistic brilliance of her reportage. She brings El Salvador to life so that it ends up invading our flesh' New York Times
'Didion has the instincts of an exceptional reporter and a novelist's appreciation for the surreal... Her clarity of style illuminates the vast darkness that engulfs El Salvador' Los Angeles Times Book Review
'Her tough, beautiful, surgically precise prose is like nothing else I've ever read' Donna Tartt
Didion's latest book, The Year of Magical Thinking (Fourth Estate), is in its sixth printing

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Customer Reviews

8 Reviews

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

Average Customer Review

3.4 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)

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1.0 out of 5 stars Four hours of fiction, Nov 16 2001

By

"jackiesdog" (Sonora, Mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Salvador (Paperback)

"Salvador" completely discredits Joan Didion and all of her books. The two weeks she is believed to have "lived" in El Salvador was actually a mere four hours. Any truths in this book, and there are but a handful, have been obtained by outside sources, not by her own "research." I lived in El Salvador when she came in to gather info for her story. It is an outrage that she so flippantly used the sufferings of the Salvadorans to effect personal gain. If you want to read fiction, go ahead. She's a good storyteller. As a service to yourself, however, keep in mind that the author has almost zero first hand knowledge of what she writes. The only reason I have the book at all is that my father gave it to me. What a shame that he wasted his money on this piece of trash.

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4.0 out of 5 stars A still life of death, Aug 31 2003

By

Jerry Brito (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Salvador (Paperback)

Joan Didion went to El Salvador for a couple of weeks in 1982 and wrote this great short book about her experience. Her tale is not about the details of the civil war or the politics involved, but just the mood of the country during that slice of time. Senseless and violent murder pervaded, and she captured it vividly and brilliantly.

Being in El Salvador must have felt like never knowing that at any moment someone could step up from behind you and fire a bullet into your head. Could one ever get used to that? Used to bodies left every day on the side of the road? Used to them laying unclaimed because, if they were claimed, that person would be next? It really made me realize how much I take for granted living under the rule of law. Human life seems to be of such little value almost everywhere else.

The other thing Didion made me realize was that there was hope for my writing. She writes in huge, long, never-ending run-on sentences with scads of parantheticals and comma-separated interludes and explanations, as well as semicolon appendages (many whole paragraphs are only one sentence long), yet she gets away with it; there's hope for me.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Salvador, Dec 6 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Salvador (Paperback)

I met Joan Didion the day she came to El Salvador. We talk for about one hour and though I find her a most inteligent woman, his ideas about the country and the civil war shocked me as completely fantastic, I thought that at the end of her visit, her ideas would be very different.
I was very surprised when I read her book several years ago. It was our conversation, as if it was written before she came to El Salvador. She first made her conclusions, then she came to the country to pick some anecdotes that fit them. Too bad. The book is a waste of paper and ink

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps Joan Didion's most important non-fictional work.
Didion's uncanny ability to use the words and mechanics of the English language to convey particular meanings is lustfully breathtaking. Read more

Published on Jan 27 2002

2.0 out of 5 stars a romantic view of civil war
This is not the book to learn about the civil that engulfed El Salvador for over 12 years. This book gives a snapshot of widely held liberal political views of the war. Read more

Published on Sep 6 2001 by J. Hinds