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The Lost City
Henry Shukman’s debut fiction collection, Mortimer of the Maghreb, was acclaimed as “fearless, brilliantly realized, [and] richly rewarding” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, in his first novel, he tells the story of a British expat searching for treasure and, more important, for connection, amid the seductions and dangers of a rootless life.
Jackson Small has just been discharged from the British military after witnessing the violent battlefield death of his closest friend, Connolly. It was Connolly who introduced him to the fascinations of ancient civilizations, enticing him with stories of La Joya, the capital of a vanished Peruvian empire. Coping with his grief, Jackson sets off in search of La Joya, hidden in the cloud forest hanging between the Andes and Amazonia.
It’s an arduous journey: through desert, arid mountains, inhospitable villages, and impenetrable jungle. And though he finds unexpected help—from a young boy as wily as he is innocent, from an irreverent village priest, and from a woman who both redefines and fulfills all of Jackson’s expectations—he’s also warned at almost every turn to abandon his search for a place that may not even exist. But he lets nothing stop him from entering the depths of the forest believed to protect the ruins of the lost city—where he will encounter other seekers whose methods are far more sinister than his own.
With its starkly lyrical voice, its headlong pace, and the romanticism of the quest that fuels it, The Lost City is at once suspenseful, continually unexpected, and thoroughly mesmerizing.
Jackson Small has just been discharged from the British military after witnessing the violent battlefield death of his closest friend, Connolly. It was Connolly who introduced him to the fascinations of ancient civilizations, enticing him with stories of La Joya, the capital of a vanished Peruvian empire. Coping with his grief, Jackson sets off in search of La Joya, hidden in the cloud forest hanging between the Andes and Amazonia.
It’s an arduous journey: through desert, arid mountains, inhospitable villages, and impenetrable jungle. And though he finds unexpected help—from a young boy as wily as he is innocent, from an irreverent village priest, and from a woman who both redefines and fulfills all of Jackson’s expectations—he’s also warned at almost every turn to abandon his search for a place that may not even exist. But he lets nothing stop him from entering the depths of the forest believed to protect the ruins of the lost city—where he will encounter other seekers whose methods are far more sinister than his own.
With its starkly lyrical voice, its headlong pace, and the romanticism of the quest that fuels it, The Lost City is at once suspenseful, continually unexpected, and thoroughly mesmerizing.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published April 2, 2007
10 people are currently reading
207 people want to read
About the author
Henry Shukman
27 books76 followersHenry Shukman (IG: @henryshukman) is an authorized Zen Master in the Sanbo Zen lineage, and is spiritual director emeritus of Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
He is the co-founder and lead meditation teacher for The Way, a meditation app that provides a modern update to the ancient path of meditation training. He also leads meditation courses and retreats.
Henry is an award-winning poet and author, whose memoir One Blade of Grass recounts his own journey through meditation practice. His new book Original Love: The Four Inns on the Path of Awakening is a manual and map describing the four key zones of meditation practice. Original Love is now available for pre-order, and will be published in early July, 2024.
His struggles and traumatic experiences as a youth, combined with a spontaneous awakening experience at 19, and many years of training under several teachers, paved the way for his developing a well-rounded approach to healing and awakening through meditation.
(copied from Amazon Web page
He is the co-founder and lead meditation teacher for The Way, a meditation app that provides a modern update to the ancient path of meditation training. He also leads meditation courses and retreats.
Henry is an award-winning poet and author, whose memoir One Blade of Grass recounts his own journey through meditation practice. His new book Original Love: The Four Inns on the Path of Awakening is a manual and map describing the four key zones of meditation practice. Original Love is now available for pre-order, and will be published in early July, 2024.
His struggles and traumatic experiences as a youth, combined with a spontaneous awakening experience at 19, and many years of training under several teachers, paved the way for his developing a well-rounded approach to healing and awakening through meditation.
(copied from Amazon Web page
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 31 reviews
June 21, 2009
I'm a sucker for "lost city" books, so I picked this one up without much perusal. Note to self, next time, peruse more. Shukman writes very good prose at times and he has a good travel writer's eye for the details of foreigness. Sadly, he has no flare for story and no feel for character.
October 22, 2008
I spent the whole book worrying about the cat!
February 19, 2010
Really enjoyed this coming of age novel, great descriptions of Jungles, jungle way of life with some interesting characters - has a little piece of everything this book - romance, adventure, loyalty & finding one's self. Recommended.
September 19, 2024
When I read this book five years ago I made a note that it was OK but not my cup-of-tea. On that basis I am giving it three stars which I suspect is more than it deserves. Nothing of the novel remains in my mind and that is never a good sign.
September 10, 2008
The cover of this book portrays a mysteriously beautiful landscape, which is rather apt as the book develops quite quickly into a beautiful tapestry describing the landscape both geological and anthropological of South America.
The role of the main character (Jackson) seems secondary to the great backdrop of his surroundings for a lot of the time, which is perhaps appropriate as he himself is never in complete control and permanently at the will of fate.
Jacksons back story for his reasons to complete his quest are vague and somewhat thin on the ground but equal to that of any number of British adventurers in the real world. Whether or not the nature of the back story is deliberate is irrelevant though as the novel seems to be predominantly a travel novel and the story of Jackson merely a vessel for the story of the travel.
After reading the book I am left with beautiful, colourful images of the landscapes that the story travels through rather than memories of the characters and events.
I certainly wouldn't treat the secondary nature of the main character as a negative, when reading the book, Jacksons journey provided a subtle sense of urgency to the book that made it difficult to put down. It was just that the more often than not the thing to look forward to on the next page was the new landscapes to explore.
The role of the main character (Jackson) seems secondary to the great backdrop of his surroundings for a lot of the time, which is perhaps appropriate as he himself is never in complete control and permanently at the will of fate.
Jacksons back story for his reasons to complete his quest are vague and somewhat thin on the ground but equal to that of any number of British adventurers in the real world. Whether or not the nature of the back story is deliberate is irrelevant though as the novel seems to be predominantly a travel novel and the story of Jackson merely a vessel for the story of the travel.
After reading the book I am left with beautiful, colourful images of the landscapes that the story travels through rather than memories of the characters and events.
I certainly wouldn't treat the secondary nature of the main character as a negative, when reading the book, Jacksons journey provided a subtle sense of urgency to the book that made it difficult to put down. It was just that the more often than not the thing to look forward to on the next page was the new landscapes to explore.
December 25, 2022
This is a stellar adventure complete with fascinating characters, exotic locations in the Peruvian Andes, heartfelt emotion and fully developed character of the male protagonist, and a fully developed gift of description. I enjoyed it so much I will probably read it again...and soon...
May 21, 2021
Ostensibly a story in which a young man sets out to find a lost city in the Andes, Henry Shukman's The Lost City is in fact nothing of the sort. Whereas the quest of discovery is held as the primary motive of the protagonist, Jackson, it is in fact one of the most minor strands of the plot, which held great promise but was strangely unfulfilling.
It is hard to put one's finger on what exactly is wrong with this book, but I can gauge that for every compliment one may pay it there is a significant caveat, most of which are down to the plot. The descriptive prose is evocative, but often overdone and tends to drag the storytelling out. The relationships - particularly Jackson's with Sarah and with Connelly - attempt to add some depth to the characterisation, but are so one-dimensional and predictable that they de-energise the plot. The quest for the lost city is itself a let-down, a damp squib; its belated discovery is covered in a single chapter towards the end, after which the plot continues on its messy circling of the drain.
Addressing the quest for the lost city so sketchily would have been forgivable if what took its place in the author's priorities was actually interesting. Instead, we get a somewhat boring story of a man backpacking - holidaying, essentially - in Peru, "trying to find himself". Consequently, it is hard to shake the feeling that Jackson's mentality is similar to that of a gap year student, identifying the romantic, simple nobility of the foreign peasantry. Unfortunately, this mentality is carried through to completion; there is endless banal philosophising, the type of which might sound good in the author's head, but when put down on paper looks like the rambling brain farts of a teenage philosophy student. Exhibit A: "The land is an animal. The land is a human being asleep. Or awake but incapable of movement. Freely moving but we don't look right so we don't see the movement" (pg. 166).
And it is not just Jackson, from whom we are gifted the above enlightened nugget of truth, but all characters engage in the same kind of aimless philosophising. This means that one hears the voice of the author in all of the characters; they are all indistinct, thinking the same things merely repackaged in different vessels. Every character - minor and major, from criminal gun thugs to priests - is, it seems, a philosopher, who hates the materialism of the West and monologues in florid prose. It occasionally makes the novel tedious to read. So, for the love interest Sarah, life is "a game you find yourself caught in, though you never asked to join. And you have to discover the rules by yourself as you play" (pg. 140). For Jackson, life is "a glass capsule with night pressing in on all sides. It was just a matter of time until it broke" (pg. 178), which seems profound until you actually think about it. After seeing a dance procession, Jackson muses about how 'that was what life consisted of' - entering and exiting a stage (pg. 145). I was half-expecting one character to tell us how 'life is like a box of chocolates' - indeed, that is essentially the train of thought that is regurgitated over and over throughout the novel. Like I suggested before, that is not real philosophising, just an exercise in banality. By the time the drug smuggler Stryker, a minor character who appears only briefly, begins to muse on the West as "that dismal place of lost souls drifting through lives they hated" (pg. 216), one begins to despair at Shukman's decision to provide no variety in the characters' outlooks.
It is this, I believe, which is why I had such a negative reaction to The Lost City. It is a below-average travel book masquerading as an adventure novel, evidenced most strongly by the fact that once La Joya, the lost city, is found, Shukman quickly moves on to other matters. The apparent message - that it is the journey, not the destination, that is important - is a Disneyland moral that fits in well with the trite philosophising of the characters. It is not a bad book, but it is the literary equivalent of painting a turd. It has been praised for its eloquent prose, but this merely serves as a superficial dressing to cover up the lack of plot, characterisation or, indeed, anything substantial. In the novel, Jackson is searching for a lost ancient city in the mountains, which is obscured by the clouds. The book itself uses a similar smokescreen to hide what is beneath the surface, but what is actually beneath is nothing as wondrous as lost treasures.
It is hard to put one's finger on what exactly is wrong with this book, but I can gauge that for every compliment one may pay it there is a significant caveat, most of which are down to the plot. The descriptive prose is evocative, but often overdone and tends to drag the storytelling out. The relationships - particularly Jackson's with Sarah and with Connelly - attempt to add some depth to the characterisation, but are so one-dimensional and predictable that they de-energise the plot. The quest for the lost city is itself a let-down, a damp squib; its belated discovery is covered in a single chapter towards the end, after which the plot continues on its messy circling of the drain.
Addressing the quest for the lost city so sketchily would have been forgivable if what took its place in the author's priorities was actually interesting. Instead, we get a somewhat boring story of a man backpacking - holidaying, essentially - in Peru, "trying to find himself". Consequently, it is hard to shake the feeling that Jackson's mentality is similar to that of a gap year student, identifying the romantic, simple nobility of the foreign peasantry. Unfortunately, this mentality is carried through to completion; there is endless banal philosophising, the type of which might sound good in the author's head, but when put down on paper looks like the rambling brain farts of a teenage philosophy student. Exhibit A: "The land is an animal. The land is a human being asleep. Or awake but incapable of movement. Freely moving but we don't look right so we don't see the movement" (pg. 166).
And it is not just Jackson, from whom we are gifted the above enlightened nugget of truth, but all characters engage in the same kind of aimless philosophising. This means that one hears the voice of the author in all of the characters; they are all indistinct, thinking the same things merely repackaged in different vessels. Every character - minor and major, from criminal gun thugs to priests - is, it seems, a philosopher, who hates the materialism of the West and monologues in florid prose. It occasionally makes the novel tedious to read. So, for the love interest Sarah, life is "a game you find yourself caught in, though you never asked to join. And you have to discover the rules by yourself as you play" (pg. 140). For Jackson, life is "a glass capsule with night pressing in on all sides. It was just a matter of time until it broke" (pg. 178), which seems profound until you actually think about it. After seeing a dance procession, Jackson muses about how 'that was what life consisted of' - entering and exiting a stage (pg. 145). I was half-expecting one character to tell us how 'life is like a box of chocolates' - indeed, that is essentially the train of thought that is regurgitated over and over throughout the novel. Like I suggested before, that is not real philosophising, just an exercise in banality. By the time the drug smuggler Stryker, a minor character who appears only briefly, begins to muse on the West as "that dismal place of lost souls drifting through lives they hated" (pg. 216), one begins to despair at Shukman's decision to provide no variety in the characters' outlooks.
It is this, I believe, which is why I had such a negative reaction to The Lost City. It is a below-average travel book masquerading as an adventure novel, evidenced most strongly by the fact that once La Joya, the lost city, is found, Shukman quickly moves on to other matters. The apparent message - that it is the journey, not the destination, that is important - is a Disneyland moral that fits in well with the trite philosophising of the characters. It is not a bad book, but it is the literary equivalent of painting a turd. It has been praised for its eloquent prose, but this merely serves as a superficial dressing to cover up the lack of plot, characterisation or, indeed, anything substantial. In the novel, Jackson is searching for a lost ancient city in the mountains, which is obscured by the clouds. The book itself uses a similar smokescreen to hide what is beneath the surface, but what is actually beneath is nothing as wondrous as lost treasures.
September 3, 2020
The Lost City by Henry Shukman was offered to me as a read and I did not know what to expect from the story but the cover the book description grabbed my interest of a lost city to be discovered in the Peruvian jungle – sounds exciting, however it was not as exciting as I had imagined.
Don’t get me wrong, Shukman is a beautiful writer and his descriptions are poetic and the jungle scenes and landscapes of Peru just flow off the page, however the story itself was more about the journey the young protagonist, Jackson Small took to find the city of La Joya, and the characters he met along the way.
I believe the story for me lost momentum after the first couple of chapters and it was not quite clear the direction it was taking as I was waiting for the character to stumble across the city. The Lost City is a story about the journey the character takes and how he finds love with a young woman who helps him to heal the grief from the traumatised violent death of his fellow soldier, whom he had a close relationship with, which caused him to set out on the journey to Peru in the first place.
This book will give the reader a beautiful raw view of Peru through Shukman’s wonderful poetic descriptions, loyalty of characters, a sense of adventure and one of self-discovery through the character of Jackson Small.
Don’t get me wrong, Shukman is a beautiful writer and his descriptions are poetic and the jungle scenes and landscapes of Peru just flow off the page, however the story itself was more about the journey the young protagonist, Jackson Small took to find the city of La Joya, and the characters he met along the way.
I believe the story for me lost momentum after the first couple of chapters and it was not quite clear the direction it was taking as I was waiting for the character to stumble across the city. The Lost City is a story about the journey the character takes and how he finds love with a young woman who helps him to heal the grief from the traumatised violent death of his fellow soldier, whom he had a close relationship with, which caused him to set out on the journey to Peru in the first place.
This book will give the reader a beautiful raw view of Peru through Shukman’s wonderful poetic descriptions, loyalty of characters, a sense of adventure and one of self-discovery through the character of Jackson Small.
August 10, 2023
This book just didn't really live up to what I thought it would be. I'm a sucker for a good jungle wilderness exploration story, but that seemed to be only a very small part of the story and I was disappointed. Full disclosure I read the first 2/3rds before I had to put it down. It seemed to be quickly turning into some kind of drug smuggling thriller or something but nothing about the story was unique enough to hold my interest. It felt very recycled.
The love interest story lines were quite cliche and a little bit cheesy.
The love interest story lines were quite cliche and a little bit cheesy.
September 22, 2024
I started this book enthusiastically and good with hopes as it had a good beginning.
But, besides being poorly structured, it is beyond me why the author does not put dialogue spoken by the characters in quotes, as is traditional in writing. It made the book read like one very long narrative (which he already has plenty of, somewhat in excess). I grew tired of not having the story properly broken up in that way, and along with a storyline that needs a good edit, lost interest.
But, besides being poorly structured, it is beyond me why the author does not put dialogue spoken by the characters in quotes, as is traditional in writing. It made the book read like one very long narrative (which he already has plenty of, somewhat in excess). I grew tired of not having the story properly broken up in that way, and along with a storyline that needs a good edit, lost interest.
January 4, 2025
This was a story that goes from the army back to the states. Then takes Jackson to the cities & jungles of Peru. In his travels he finds love & a family. Jackson & Sarah then find their way back to NY together where they find work & Jackson attends college.
Great story full of heartbreak but ends with love.
Great story full of heartbreak but ends with love.
March 11, 2018
Ok, so this wasn't quite the swashbuckling Percy Fawcett-esque adventure novel I'd thought it would be, but in its own way, it's very enjoyable.
The writing style took a little bit of getting used to, but once settled in, it's hard to put down.
And Ignacio is awesome, as is el Gato.
The writing style took a little bit of getting used to, but once settled in, it's hard to put down.
And Ignacio is awesome, as is el Gato.
October 30, 2023
I enjoyed this but did wonder what the betrayal would be. It was so well described you could imagine being in the cloud forest. There was something missing that stopped it being a better book, possibly the characters.
September 5, 2017
This novel has a strong sense of place. Peru never sounded so beautiful. I enjoyed the love story and the sense of danger.
November 28, 2017
it was ok... something to read on a holiday and hope you'd remember something useful about it - Peruvian history for example.
April 13, 2025
This book was not at all what I was expecting. I don't even know how to process what I read
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 18, 2008
I have been enthusing over this book to anyone who will listen, including small children and pets. The author Henry Shukman is an experienced travel writer and he is very good at capturing the feel of his settings. His handling of moods and relationships is first-rate, as is his method of slowly building dramatic tension.
This was the story of Jackson Small, ex-British army, who suffered a breakdown after seeing his best mate Connolly die in in a fire-fight. Was it a case of friendly fire?
Connolly had made plans with Jackson to search for a mythical lost city in the jungles of Peru, a discovery that would dwarf Machu Pichu. Jackson is determined to find the city, to realize Connolly's dream but also to heal something within himself. Reading this book, I was reminded of Hemingway's line about people becoming strong at the broken places.
Jackson has certainly been broken; he feels isolated from the living but obsessed by memories of his dead friend. Along the way, a taciturn young orphan attaches himself to Jackson. Later, Jackson joins up with a young American woman whose old hippie uncle who lives the life of a modern-day Thoreau up in the hills.
Everyone warns Jackson to abandon his goal. The area he wants to go to is extremely dangerous, the haunt of drug lords and guerrilleros. The only person who seems to encourage Jackson is an official at the British consulate (more Graham Greene than Ian Fleming) who would like Jackson to perform a "little service". The murky world of intelligence and security concerns looms in the background. After leaving the army, Jackson had hoped to escape that world, and now he feels captured by it.
As in any quest story, the lost city in the jungle is only one of the things that Jackson is looking for. He seeks a way to come to terms with his past and make sense of his life, and maybe return to the woman who might make life worthwhile. He is trying to figure out a way to do all that without compromising with people he doesn't trust.
This was the story of Jackson Small, ex-British army, who suffered a breakdown after seeing his best mate Connolly die in in a fire-fight. Was it a case of friendly fire?
Connolly had made plans with Jackson to search for a mythical lost city in the jungles of Peru, a discovery that would dwarf Machu Pichu. Jackson is determined to find the city, to realize Connolly's dream but also to heal something within himself. Reading this book, I was reminded of Hemingway's line about people becoming strong at the broken places.
Jackson has certainly been broken; he feels isolated from the living but obsessed by memories of his dead friend. Along the way, a taciturn young orphan attaches himself to Jackson. Later, Jackson joins up with a young American woman whose old hippie uncle who lives the life of a modern-day Thoreau up in the hills.
Everyone warns Jackson to abandon his goal. The area he wants to go to is extremely dangerous, the haunt of drug lords and guerrilleros. The only person who seems to encourage Jackson is an official at the British consulate (more Graham Greene than Ian Fleming) who would like Jackson to perform a "little service". The murky world of intelligence and security concerns looms in the background. After leaving the army, Jackson had hoped to escape that world, and now he feels captured by it.
As in any quest story, the lost city in the jungle is only one of the things that Jackson is looking for. He seeks a way to come to terms with his past and make sense of his life, and maybe return to the woman who might make life worthwhile. He is trying to figure out a way to do all that without compromising with people he doesn't trust.
April 15, 2008
Review by Nathan Ihara
Shukman’s novel, which opens promisingly with a lone figure walking through a desert, turns out to be something of a trifle. The book’s best qualities are those of travel writing: local color, evocative descriptions (“Against the white sky, vultures turned like tea leaves in a just-stirred cup”) and a sense of mystery and movement. The novel’s protagonist, Jackson Small, a troubled young man fed up with military life and the dreariness of England, embarks on the journey made by so many young people — a search for “real life” and “authenticity” in a foreign land, all of which he finds with relative ease. He adopts, or is adopted by, an Indian boy named Ignacio who tags along with the silent obedience of a clever dog — in fact, “Jackson was reminded of a dog they’d had when he was a boy ... [the boy] stirred the same tender feeling he used to have then.” He falls in love with a honey-haired American woman named Sarah. The two visit Sarah’s uncle Alfredo, who lives on a mountain farm with his two wives and preaches to them about the simple life and the problems of the white man. Finally, Jackson ventures out into the lawless jungle, where he discovers his magnificent ruins, only to get lost and then captured by the philosophical drug lord Carreras, who lectures on the ethics of the war on drugs until Jackson has a chance to escape.
Click here to read the rest of the review.
Shukman’s novel, which opens promisingly with a lone figure walking through a desert, turns out to be something of a trifle. The book’s best qualities are those of travel writing: local color, evocative descriptions (“Against the white sky, vultures turned like tea leaves in a just-stirred cup”) and a sense of mystery and movement. The novel’s protagonist, Jackson Small, a troubled young man fed up with military life and the dreariness of England, embarks on the journey made by so many young people — a search for “real life” and “authenticity” in a foreign land, all of which he finds with relative ease. He adopts, or is adopted by, an Indian boy named Ignacio who tags along with the silent obedience of a clever dog — in fact, “Jackson was reminded of a dog they’d had when he was a boy ... [the boy] stirred the same tender feeling he used to have then.” He falls in love with a honey-haired American woman named Sarah. The two visit Sarah’s uncle Alfredo, who lives on a mountain farm with his two wives and preaches to them about the simple life and the problems of the white man. Finally, Jackson ventures out into the lawless jungle, where he discovers his magnificent ruins, only to get lost and then captured by the philosophical drug lord Carreras, who lectures on the ethics of the war on drugs until Jackson has a chance to escape.
Click here to read the rest of the review.
February 5, 2017
I loved this book.
It is a rare combination of a rip-roaring adventure and quest for self, with a thoughtful, poetic sensibility that has that special chime of veracity.
Set in northern Peru, Shukman nails the landscape, the people, and the sense of being a young traveller - the hopes and the fears.
I really recommend this book too those who like high quality writing blended within an adventure story
It is a rare combination of a rip-roaring adventure and quest for self, with a thoughtful, poetic sensibility that has that special chime of veracity.
Set in northern Peru, Shukman nails the landscape, the people, and the sense of being a young traveller - the hopes and the fears.
I really recommend this book too those who like high quality writing blended within an adventure story
February 8, 2016
English ex-army guy searching for Inca ruin city in Peru. Travels with Peruvian boy who doesn't let go, meets American girl who is travelling to visit her uncle, love affair, drug cartels controlling the ruin sites, our hero being naive and almost dying, getting captured by drug lord... blablabla.
Not sure why some people are enthusiastic about this and call it a travel novel. The several page long descriptions of nature and inner thoughts are tedious, the plot w/o the long descriptions is shallow and mostly predictable. Too bad....
Not sure why some people are enthusiastic about this and call it a travel novel. The several page long descriptions of nature and inner thoughts are tedious, the plot w/o the long descriptions is shallow and mostly predictable. Too bad....
July 7, 2015
This book took ages to read for me. I got back to it on many locations. I started reading it in Sydney, then NZ, then Sydney again, then LA, then Sydney!! Just distracted by other things but it is a great read. Would love a sequel. The friendships & relationships emerging between people who come to each other's aid & back story of searching for the lost incan city are really awesome. If you like mystery, adventure and being taken to another place then check it out
March 2, 2013
His descriptions of scenery is excellent and that is what drew me into this book. It was a good read of a traveler trying to come to terms with the death of a friend and some mental issues from his army life. The only issue I had was that it seemed the writer couldn't decide if he was writing a serious character driven story or an action/mystery with a few moralistic lessons thrown in. Worth a read though.
February 17, 2016
I chose this book because it's set in Peru and I'm doing a reading challenge to read books set all over the world. This reminded me a lot of Andy Garland's The Beach.
I didn't love the writing style so found it a bit hard to get through, but I did like the story, despite it being quite slow in the first half. I'm sure some readers would just love this writing style. What does the author have against quotation marks?
I felt something for the characters - I loved Ignatio.
I didn't love the writing style so found it a bit hard to get through, but I did like the story, despite it being quite slow in the first half. I'm sure some readers would just love this writing style. What does the author have against quotation marks?
I felt something for the characters - I loved Ignatio.
July 10, 2016
You can tell Mr. Shukman is a poet; he can be way over the top. And this book is anthropomorphic as all get out. But this book has thoroughly seduced me. I want to go to the Peruvian Andes now. I even dream about a "cloud forest."
September 26, 2010
An adventure story in South America... More to come.
Currently reading
July 8, 2008A young man's attempt to find himself via a anthropological quest in South America.
March 5, 2009
Full confession - I didn't finish this book, because I think it had to go back to the library and was on my sister's card. But it was interesting while I had it...
March 17, 2010
A really strange but compelling book.
January 11, 2019
Rep: gay side character
Displaying 1 - 29 of 31 reviews