ANGELS

by Denis Johnson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 27, 1983

From the very opening pages, it's obvious that poet Johnson's debut novel is uncommonly rendered--in language of expressionistic distortion (just yet punishing) reminiscent of a Goya etching; it's also obvious that this fiction--in its unswerving ugliness--won't be easy to take. Jamie, with her two baby girls, is on a Greyhound bus from Oakland, California, headed for Hershey, Pennsylvania; she's escaping from a husband who has gone zombie-like on her; and she herself could be a lot more mentally stable. On the bus she sits next to Bill Houston, Jr., an ex-con and alcoholic--a chunk of human flotsam so spiritually disfigured that he has a sort of obverse charm, especially for someone in such a hopeless state as Jamie. Resourceless and vulnerable, she falls: they get off together at Pittsburgh with the children; they drink and drink; they go to Chicago (where Jamie is raped, where Bill robs a hardware store); they continue on to Phoenix. There, with his low-life brothers, Bill robs a bank--but disastrously, ineptly. He shoots the guard: ""Holding his gun out toward the guard and firing was something like spraying paint--trying to get every spot covered. He wanted to make sure there was no life showing through."" He is then caught, convicted, led to the gas chamber. (""He was in the middle of taking the last breath of his life before he realized he was taking it. But it was all right. Boom! Unbelievable! And another coming? How many of these things do you mean to give away? He got right in the dark between heartbeats, and rested there. And then he saw that another wasn't going to come, That's it. That's the last. He looked at the dark."") And meanwhile Jamie has gone mad, been hospitalized, entering a demonic pit more eerily credible than most in fiction. . . but her tentative ascent out of insanity will make you hold your breath. Johnson's book, one of the strongest examples of fiction noir since Robert Stone's work first appeared, occasionally revels too much in its vividly irrational connections, its chant-like horror--to the detriment of narrative momentum. But, with an absence of sentimentality and an overall shape that's perfectly judged, this is one of the most impressive first novels of recent seasons--full of a fiery recoiling kick, the dreadful power of human ugliness and misfortune beyond redemption.

Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1983

ISBN: 0060988827

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1983

Categories: FICTION