The Long Night of White Chickens

by Francisco Goldman

The Long Night of White Chickens is a novel truly born of two worlds: It is the story of Roger Graetz, raised in a Boston suburb by an aristocratic Guatemalan mother, and his relationship with Flor de Mayo, the beautiful young Guatemalan orphan sent by his grandmother to live with his family as a maid. When, years later in the 1980s, Flor is murdered in Guatemala while running an orphanage, Roger returns to uncover the truth of her death. There he is reunited with Luis Moya, a childhood friend, and together they attempt to chronicle Flor's life story, a quest that will have unexpected, and unforgettable repercussions.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Latin American, The United States Of America, Literary Fiction, Adult Fiction, Mystery

472 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Francisco Goldman is an American novelist, journalist, and 'maestro', at Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI), the journalism school for Latin-America created by Gabriel García Márquez. Goldman is also known as Francisco Goldman Molina, "Frank" and "Paco".

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a Guatemalan mother and Jewish-American father. His first novel, The Long Night of White Chickens (1992), won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and his second, The Ordinary Seaman (1997), was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He currently resides in Mexico City and Brooklyn, New York. He also teaches at Trinity College (Connecticut).

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Senryu Review:

Guatemalan girl
postmortemed with panache in
long cluck of genius

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I desperately wanted to like this book more than I did. Like Goldman, my mother is Guatemalan and my father was American. I too had a Guatemalan nanny/maid, from a small town, sent to us by my grandmother. I am very familiar with Guatemala's civil war and the impact it had, the shady dealings, the corruption, the assassinations, etc. That involved me in the story, and although that kept me reading, I found myself skimming through it a little. It seemed to me that something was missing - I'm not sure if it was the dialogue (although I did identify with the slang and the tone of the conversations between the Guatemalan characters), a persisting feeling of being a bit out-of-touch with the characters. I didn't care about them as much as I should have.

Goldman is a much better journalist/non-fiction writer than a fiction writer. Like an investigative journalist, he keeps a certain level of tension throughout most of the novel, although it is lost sometimes. For example, I recently read a New Yorker article on the assassination of a prominent Guatemalan lawyer and the investigation into it. The article was excellent, and I was thinking about Goldman the whole time. He would have done a great job. I am reading a non-fiction book by Goldman right now, and I think it is a much better example of what Goldman can do.

[Oriyah N · Rating 3 out of 5]

A review re-written is never as good as the first, but Goodreads ate my other one, so here goes again.

Is there a point in even writing a review when my opinion has already been covered by someone else? In passing I fleetingly happened along the beginning of someone else's review of this book, which pretty well sums up my sentiments - I wanted to like this book more than I actually did.

It had good bones, the necessary components of a GREAT work of fiction: Interesting plot twists, fascinating main characters, enjoyable language with some REALLY good lines thrown in there, ("Oh, sure! F%^$&er! Go back to your little hippie girls and their hairy armpits full of lice!" on page 352, for example,) and yet - the whole thing fell sort of, but not entirely, flat.

The minor characters were unremarkable enough that I didn't remember them if/when their names came up again later (perhaps because it took me, a fairly fast reader, so freaking LONG to get to those next mentions), the story often stopped and started at different points, plonking the reader in the middle of some sort of complex moment in time that is really hard to orient ones-self in without the context that would only come later, after I lost interest ....this book had its high (4 star moments) and its low (2 star moment) points. It had a remarkably unremarkable ending, and I ended up giving it three stars, which is incredibly generous considering. Just like this review ends unremarkably, so did the book. You're finally done reading now, consider yourself released...

[Lena]

It pains me to abandon a book once I've started it, so I tend to be very selective about what I read to begin with. Despite my reservations about this one, however, I opted to give it a try because it was the first selection for a book club I'd joined. Unfortunately, after 115 pages, I found it too long and slow to spend more time on when there are so many other books I want to read.

The cover of the book advertised the awards it has won, and the topic of a murder linked to Guatemala's illegal adoption industry promised to be interesting. But the book has a number of major problems, including a distinct lack of tension, a self-absorbed narrator I found it difficult to care about, and a frequent jumping around in time that made it very hard to track the story.

There were some well-written passages about life in Guatemala that I did enjoy, but these few moments weren't enough to overcome the book's other issues.

[Maria Regina Paiz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book because it was written by a half-Guatemalan author who became a PEN/Faulkner finalist. I am bewildered as to how this novel made it so high up the ladder. I found it excessively wordy, to the point of jumping ahead a few paragraphs at a time, and finished it out of sheer discipline. You know a book is dragging ass when you're constantly checking the page percentage to see if you're a little closer to the end. It's almost 500 pages long, too, so I ended up dropping it and picking it up again until I finally decided to get through it on a sleepless night.

The plot started out interesting enough: a Guatemalan orphan is taken to a Boston home to work as a maid. Once there she earns her place in the family, and ends up going to college in Wellesley. Later on, she returns to Guatemala as director of an orphanage, where she takes special care in placing her charges in good homes. One day, she is gruesomely murdered, impelling Roger (the Boston boy she considered her almost-brother) to return to Guatemala to investigate her murder.

Goldman does a great job in describing the hecticness and bustle of Guatemala city and its corrupt political scene. However, the author goes off on so many tangents that he lost me and my patience. Also, the entire book is plagued with mistakes, especially those written in Spanish, to the point that I wondered if Goldman can even speak the language. What this book needed was a chop-friendly bilingual editor to fix the mistakes and delete all the unnecessary drivel.

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably would have given this four stars if I had have read it in a less distracted fashion. This is a book to read all at once, or in long sittings. I really loved some of the writing and the characters. It won the Sue Kaufman prize for first fiction, and I think it deserves it.

The whole thing felt like I was sitting down with the narrator and being told a long and complex story. The narrator had one too many rums and so did I (in my imagination). He jumped back and forth, from the past to the present, then back to some other part of the past. It felt very real in that regard. This is exactly what "The Long Night of White Chickens" is--a long night where two of the characters get to know each other, but we are told this in bits and pieces throughout the book.

However, I think it should have been shorter. Sometimes I felt Goldman repeated himself (or let his characters repeat themselves). Often this repetition served to refresh our memory about some plot point. If the plot had been more linear this wouldn't have been necessary. I don't mind non-linear books, but if this book suffered from too much back and forth.

[Michael Flick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tale of two people, Roger and his family maid, Flor, who was sent to the family from an orphanage in Guatemala by his grandmother. Years later, Flor is murdered in Guatemala and that is investigated by Roger and his friend since childhood, Luis Moya, who was her lover for a time before she was killed. That sounds complicated because it is, and tragic, as are many stories in Guatemala. A complex tale, brilliantly told.

[Madeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this, but...way to not wrap up ANYTHING AT ALL. Except the white chickens, I guess. At least I found out what the white chickens were about. On approximately page 400.

[Giovanni García-Fenech · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Francisco Goldman but this was a real mess of a novel, and twice as long as it needed to be. Still enjoyed it, though.

[Adeena Moghni · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has taken me literally months to read, has followed me from coast to coast, has been the albatross around my neck and finally… war is over. the book had a lot of things going on and honestly could’ve used a better edit bc it was really confusing for a lot of it. But a very interesting exploration of Guatemala and the US. My boy Moya was done dirty though

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Francisco Goldman, "The Long Night of the White Chickens." Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993.
Another book that I’ve had for a very long time. This is Goldman’s first novel. I’ve also read his non-fiction book, "The Art of Political Murder." Goldman’s mother is Guatemalan, Goldman has spent much time in Guatemala, and he has taken a keen interest in Guatemala throughout his writing career. The book reminds me of Carolyn Forché’s memoir, "What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance" (2019), about the time she spent in El Salvador in the 1980s. Both resonate with the creepiness of living under a military dictatorship, when life is violent and unpredictable because the government is violent and unpredictable. It also reminded me of Junot Diaz’s novel "The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao "(2007), and Alexa Hagerty’s forensic memoir "Still Life with Bones: Genetics, Forensics, and What Remains" (2023). In each case, it is about an outsider trying to make sense of something that has happened inside a country which has been roiled by dictatorship and violence, which makes understanding and truth impossible to come by. The country ends up being a huge insoluble puzzle. These are all narratives of frustration, and the attempts to navigate the political, cultural, and personal realms of dictatorship inevitably result in encounters of various levels of threat to psyche, life, and limb.
Although a novel, "The Long Night of the White Chickens" reads more like a memoir where the memoirist is attempting to puzzle something out about their own lives: that is, writing to understand what had been inexplicable. The narrator is Roger Gaetz. His mother is Guatemalan from a well-to-do family, and his father is Jewish. He grows up in a suburb of Boston on the poorer side of middle class. His abuelita provides the family with a maid, Flor de la Mayo Puac, whom she retrieves from an orphanage and sends north as well as paying a monthly salary of $100. When Flor arrives at the Gaetz household, she is 13, or maybe 16, while Roger is 5, having just recovered from a long bout with tuberculosis. Although Flor is ostensibly a maid, Roger’s father treats her more as a daughter, sending her to school, where she does extraordinarily well,ultimately leading to admission to and a degree from Wellesley College. An indigenous orphan from one of the poorest regions of Guatemala finds her way north and graduates from one of the top colleges in the US: an amazing success story. So she decides to go back to Guatemala, at a time when Guatemala is particularly unstable, the early 1980s when the country is in the midst of a series of dictators. Disappearances, death squads, torture, and the “cleansing” of indigenous communities are rampant. Violence can come from the right wing government or the left wing guerillas, and it may be difficult to tell which is which unless one is very much in the know. Flor goes to do good, humanitarian work. She runs a successful orphanage and is mysteriously murdered.
Flor’s murder is at the center of "The Long Night of the White Chickens," which reads in part like a piece of fictive investigative journalism or a detective story. Given all the forces at play, or at odds, in Guatemala, there is no easy path to discovering Flor’s murderer or the motive behind the murder. Instead, what Roger experiences is an endless labyrinth. Roger is obsessed with Flor. He fell for her when she walked in the door when he was five. He grows up with her. They establish a close bond that is a friendship that, as they get older, borders on something more intimate. She is always there for him. Later in the book, both the mother and grandmother say that Flor bewitched Roger (and his father). Flor is an extrovert, a forceful and attractive person who knows how to maneuver around barriers to achieve her aspirations. She acts, makes things happen. Roger watches. He is much more passive, insecure, indecisive, and unsure of himself. He is not motivated by aspiration or achievement. His grades are not good; he goes to a middling state college and works as a bartender after graduation without much of a life plan. But he is fascinated with Flor and has become an adjunct to her life. Her murder becomes a way that he can obsess over her even more. As a result, the book is not simple an investigation into her death but becomes a way that he can think about her entire life, his place in it, and his his feelings about her. As much as it is about Flor, "The Long Night of the White Chickens" is also Roger’s own self-reckoning. To mix metaphors, as the book moves forward, it snowballs as it follows more and more labyrinthine byways as Roger tries to find the truth about Flor’s murder.
There is a third important character in the book, Luis Moya Martinez. During the summer, Roger’s mother sends him to Guatemala to stay with his grandmother. He also attends a prep school for the months that he is there and meets Moya. As outsiders to the other upper class student, Roger and Moya become friends, but there is a break in the friendship, and Roger does not see Moya again until he comes down to Guatemala to retrieve Flor’s body. Moya is a journalist, and he has deftly threaded his way through the obstructions to the press, has maintained something like independence, and has not been killed. Unlike Roger, who is so insecure, Moya is quite self-assured and macho, although perceptive and intelligent as well. He can actually imagine a future where he would rise through Guatemalan society to a position of prestige and power. Moya knew Flor. They were friends, and they became lovers a few weeks before she was killed. A year after Flor’s murder, Roger returns to Guatemala to discover the truth about Flor’s murder. Moya becomes almost as obsessed with discovering Flor’s killer as Roger. Just as Roger’s life narrative is woven into the novel, so is Moya’s. Moya is an aggressive go-getter who, like Flor, knows how to maneuver around barriers to get what he wants. In Flor, he sees someone similar to himself, which is why he finds her attractive. Moya likes assertive, intelligent women who have an inner life. Pursuing such women is an integral part of Moya’s narrative, in contrast to Roger who seems diffident about other women, except Flor. Moya is the antithesis to Roger, and in the many conversations between the two characters Goldman uses Moya as a dialectical counterweight to Roger’s passivity and diffidence to shape Roger’s decisions and actions. Moya is Roger’s guide–his Virgil–in Guatemala, teaching him to decode the labyrinths he encounters, whether in Guatemala City or the highlands (Chichicastengo, Nebaj) where indigenous villages have been emptied out and the villagers often killed by the military.
But is is all for naught. The labyrinth is too labyrinthine. All the possible leads and explanations never lead anywhere definitive, just to more speculations, and the speculations are never satisfying enough. Moya, in the meantime, inadvertently crossed a line with the military and has to quickly go into exile, leaving Roger on his own. The novel then kind of peters out, but I think that’s the point. Roger’s diffidence returns. He follows leads that go nowhere. He is almost victimized by some street kids, and the military has figured out that he may be a threat, and so he too has to exit the country quickly. Most disappointing, Roger takes up with a woman, Zamara, who is Flor’s antithesis. She is a stripper who is trying to make something of herself, but she is not ambitious or intelligent and does not seem to have much of an inner life. She and Roger do have a lot of sex, but when it comes time for him to leave Guatemala he simply abandons her.
By the end of the book, Roger does not seem to have changed at all. Despite the time that he has spent, the paths that he has pursued, the dangers faced, and the epiphanies realized, Roger is still the same passive, diffident, directionless person he was at the beginning of the book. Other things have changed but he has not.

[Sherrie Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Amazing Read that Gives A History Lesson Too!
Reviewed By Sherrie Miranda on September 4, 2017
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
I'm glad the newer edition has a different cover. The old cover looks like it depicts the narrator's mother, but this one looks like it depicts Flor de Mayo Puac, the woman who was brought to the US (NYC area, I think) to be the family maid & care for the Narrator who, as a boy, was very ill. The father decides to adopt Flor & send her to school.
Sadly, she goes back to Guatemala and meets her demise. What I loved about this story is how much I learned, especially about Guatemala, but also about the area in the East Coast where the family lives. Flor's death remains a mystery, but the reader comes out championing Flor as a hero who tried to save the Indian children who, like her, have been removed so that Indian land can be taken over by corporate greed.
This is one of the best stories I've ever read. Garcia Marquez ain't got nothin' on Francisco Goldman!
Learn the story behind: Publish "Crimes and Impunity in New Orleans.” and help us meet our goal. @indiegogo
https://igg.me/at/CrimesImpunityNOLAn...
Sherrie Miranda’s historically based, coming of age, Adventure novel “Secrets & Lies in El Salvador” will be out en Español very soon! It is about an American girl in war-torn El Salvador:
http://tinyurl.com/klxbt4y
Her husband made a video for her novel. He wrote the song too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P11Ch... 😉

[Laura Eilers · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a real fondness for Latin American novels. From Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical realism to Juan Gabriel Vasquez’s rejection of that magical realism and always, always, a deep fondness of Pablo Neruda’s poetry, I’ve read what I can find and enjoyed it all. I very much wanted to enjoy Francisco Goldman’s The Long Night of the White Chickens as well, but it simply wasn’t on the level it could have been. It is, in essence, a murder mystery set in Guatemala, but I believe part of the problem with the book is that it tries to be too much and thus isn’t any one thing at all. The murder mystery itself turns out to be somewhat pedestrian. Guatemalan politics plays a role, and, while the horror and brutality of some of it comes up, it still feels like more of a passing mention than a real commentary on the political climate. There’s sections devoted to the mixing of cultures because the protagonist has an American Jewish father and a Guatemalan mother, but even that doesn’t paint a very clear picture. Any one of these things could have been interesting, could have been a book in and of themselves, but in the end it was a convoluted mishmash. It’s not a bad book, but it is a first book, and that shows. I’ll read more by Francisco Goldman when he writes, because I think it can only get better, and when he finally decides which thing he truly wants to focus on, then his facility with language will shine.

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

I logged this as Read because there’s no option in goodreads for abandoned. I have just began it, several times, but I doubt that I’ll pick it up again. It doesn’t happen usually with me, but after several attempts and making no progress beyond the first 50 pages or so, I faced the facts. In Theory this could have been the kind of story I liked, it seemed to have the elements for it. But I simply couldn’t enjoy it and it was down to the longwinded, wordy and unnecessarily tortuous narration style. I’m still curious to know how the story goes. But there’s plenty more books waiting for me on the shelves and better written than this one.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was meant to take a trip to Guatemala in April (but then: COVID), so wanted a book about Guatemala/by a Guatemalan author. Turns out very few Guatemalan authors get translated into English, and this was one of the exceptions, having garnered some awards. Alas, it takes place in the 80s and while it gives a feel for the socio-political climate of the country at that time, it was not what I was looking for; overly long; a woman’s story told by two male characters. The latter was especially egregious for me; I kept thinking I would finally hear from Flor, see what happened to her through her eyes, but no. This story, and the way it was told, simply wasn’t all that interesting.

[Laurel · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was not until the last hundred or so pages that the book really began to take off for me. Previously the book would move in starts and stops. The author's writing style was hard for me to follow, constantly weaving long threads only to be picked up much later. The idea itself was intriguing- two boys trying to find a loved ones killer. Although the book became suspenseful the ending left me highly disappointed.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well I must be honest, I wasn't able to finish this one....and life is too short and full of so many books to struggle with completing one that isn't bringing me joy. While the plot definitely intrigues me, getting to the point just didn't come fast enough for me. I feel like it was just a bit too "wordy" and could have been cut down by quite a bit and been very enjoyable. While I have the upmost respect for any author able to bring his thoughts to life in a book, I cannot say I always enjoy the journey. I have opted to move on, perhaps another day I will revisit and pick up where I left off.

[Frank Marzano · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book, at 450 pages, to be quite a slog. The time frame bounces between the present, the past, and the distant past so frequently that I often didn't know where I was until a couple of paragraphs in. The narrative alternates between first person objective, first person addressing another character, and third person. Perhaps it was the author's intention to disorient the reader. The ending was also quite a letdown.

However, I did learn a lot about life in Guatemala and about the life of Central American immigrants in the US. I think a strong editor could have really whipped this book into shape.

[Jo Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

actually 3.5. The beginning caught me, then i got bogged down in the middle and then decided to stay with it and the ending caught me again. The story of Flor is told by the other two friends in her life. One is her "brother" the other a brief "lover" who was a family friend. it's complicated. She is murdered and the two set out to find out by whom and why, which turns out to be not so easy to discover. In fact, the truth like so many murders in that time period, will never really be known. But the possible truths are any one of them probable.

[Naomi Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engrossing tale of one man’s search for understanding the murder of his adopted older sister divided between his two cultural backgrounds. His identity is split between his father’s suburb of Boston and his mother’s roots in Guatemala. The portrait of this beautiful yet deeply corrupt country is marvellously intimate. You feel like you’re there in the streets with him, smelling every flower and putrid stench of garbage. A wonderful read.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long, complex conversations and ramblings that remind me of having just one martini too many, and then telling a serious story. Really loved some of the lines and dialogues. I wanted to love the characters, but that wasn't the point of the book; I think the fact that people, situations, emotions are complex and rambling are (is?) more the point.

[Meghana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanted to like this more than I did -- the central mystery is compelling, and it paints a good picture of Guatemala's political and cultural strife, but the author goes on so many tangents! I honestly think he could have cut out a half-dozen minor characters and several chapters, and it would have actually helped, by making the book more tightly plotted and focused.

[Evie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A friend who has lived in Guatemala recommended this book. I struggled to get thru it. It’s overly verbose. Good description of the socio-political issues of the early 1980 s. The ending was disappointing.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been sitting on my shelf for years. I was finally inspired to read it. I wanted to love it but I found it a little confusing. I loved all the Guatemalan references.

[Susan Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can only agree with the 3 reviews below.

[Pat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I stalled on this about one third in. Interesting concept. I may return to it.

[Jean Warneke · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted so bad to like this book, I mean with a title like that? It just took too long to get wherever he was going, so I threw in the towel.

[Allyson]

Can’t really rate as i only chose this since i was going to Guatemala … not really my type of book but interesting to see the streets/towns/culture discussed throughout my trip!

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally!

I have been bogged down in this book for weeks, dissatisfied with the narrator, Roger Gaertz's speculative investigation of the death of his "sister," Flor de Mayo, head of an orphanage in Guatemala City, after having been introduced into Roger's life as a young maid imported by his Guatemalan mother and advanced by his father into US education in a Boston, MA, suburb, finally graduating from Wellesley College.

I shall say that, at the end, the book worked for me; as Flor is murdered early in the narrative, everything after becomes anticlimactic. The last scene sees Roger about to board a bus for Mexico to meet his friend and fellow "investigator," Moya, briefly Flor's lover. The central image is that of a spider in several forms, and the web of rumor and deceit permeates the story, appropriate enough for the Guatemala of the 1970s but extending into the multiple relationships--Roger and Flora, Roger's mother and Flora, his father and Flora, Flora and Celso, a VIP newspaper editor/owner, Moya as one of his journalists, Roger's friend and Flora's lover, street gangs run by police, etc, etc, etc. That Flora's murder is never close to being solved though it serves to inspire numerous theories offers the central experience of the reader; Guatemala is rife with rumor; Celso: The problem with this country is that everybody does everything in secret and, in the end, we all pay. I mean to say we all pay because everyone believes everything."

So much is left sketched, hinted at, theorized, that this reader, at least, comes away from the book concerned about matters other than the murder, its "causes," and its perpetrator than with the relationships outlined above. If I were still teaching, I would certainly jump right back into the book to try to learn how early the ambiguities begin to unfold around and obscure the base narrative.

There is some lovely writing here, in descriptions.

[Jackie (Farm Lane Books) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book because the title intrigued me and I hadn't read a book set in Guatemala before. It is a long, slow read, but gives a good insight into the problems faced by those living in this country.

The story begins with us discovering what life is like for Roger, a child raised in Boston by his Guatemalan mother. The differences between the American and Guatemalan cultures were revealed and I discovered many facts I didn't know:

Houses in Guatemala generally don't have basements. It's an earthquake country, so people aren't going to rest an entire house over an abyss. During the rainy season basements would flood. In Guatemala City's General Cemetery even the dead are buried aboveground, the rich in mausoleums the poor in long, high walls, coffins slid into them like cabinets, decorated with flowers and wreaths, Indian boys running around with rickety wooden ladders they rent for ten centavos to mourners who need to reach the top rows.

As Roger grows up he bonds with his maid, a Guatemalan orphan. One day she leaves to set up an orphanage in her own country. When Roger hears that she has been murdered he heads straight to the scene of the crime to discover what really happened to her.

The Long Night of White Chickens is a massive book. It took me over two months to complete as it is rich in detail and cannot be rushed. This means it occasionally felt frustratingly slow, but on reaching the end I was impressed by the accomplishment. It is an important book that raises more questions than answers; revealing layers of corruption and violence within a frightened society.

This book isn't for everyone, but if you enjoy detailed, meandering stories and would like to understand what it is really like to live in Guatemala then I think this is a great place to start.