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gajeam's review against another edition
3.0
Highs and lows. Truly more transportive to a time and place (Mexico City in the 2010s) than almost any nonfiction I’ve ever read, but the second half gets bogged down in details of the Heavens bar levantón. He seems to have written this whole book contemporaneously with events as they happened, which is its strength and its weakness.
emmkayt's review against another edition
4.0
Goldman lives part of the year in Mexico City, and he writes about it with affection and depth. He focuses on 2012-13, a time when he continued to grapple with the rawness of his grief after the death of his wife. He decides to learn to drive stick shift and to drive in the city - Mexico City’s notorious traffic having long dissuaded him. The first part of the book intersperses his (not exactly successful) efforts with other musings about life in the city and his own grief and memories. The second part of the book delves into the ‘leviton’ or disappearance of a group of young people from a nightclub, using it to explore politics and crime in the city.
Ultimately, while Goldman was unsuccessful in mastering the ‘interior circuit’ (the name of an internal highway in the city), he completes another truly interior circuit of sorts through the course of the book. I found it moving and also loved how he wrote about the city - I recognized some places I knew, and was enriched by being introduced to others in advance of a return visit.
Ultimately, while Goldman was unsuccessful in mastering the ‘interior circuit’ (the name of an internal highway in the city), he completes another truly interior circuit of sorts through the course of the book. I found it moving and also loved how he wrote about the city - I recognized some places I knew, and was enriched by being introduced to others in advance of a return visit.
yenirulop's review against another edition
2.0
Editorialmente me parece muy irregular, no creo que la imagen del circuito interior se mantenga en todo el libro, sobre todo en la crónica con lo sucedido en el caso Heavens. También creo que algunas opiniones o planeamientos de los hechos sobre los chilangos o sobre la violencia en Morelos tiene este tufito del extranjero que se deja seducir por un falso exotismo o por la imprecisiones de quien ve la situación política y social de un país. Aunque esta actitudes es lo menos, su apenas sugerencia me molestó bastante.
8little_paws's review against another edition
3.0
this book felt all over the place. the first half, about him getting through his grieving period, is stronger than the second half which is about a group kidnapping in Mexico city. I felt the whole thing was too loosely related.
bshook's review
4.0
This book could have used better editing as it never really coheres. Then again, maybe that's a fitting way to represent a place that one loves--through disjointed snippets of daily life, geography lessons, and a deep dive into that place's cruelest realities, in this case all through the lens of grief.
Goldman describes just about every young woman he meets in lascivious detail, like when he calls the teenaged sister of an abducted woman "a classic cheerleader type" whose "swath of brown belly showed in the space between her pressed T-shirt and spotless pale tight jeans." Could have done without that.
Goldman describes just about every young woman he meets in lascivious detail, like when he calls the teenaged sister of an abducted woman "a classic cheerleader type" whose "swath of brown belly showed in the space between her pressed T-shirt and spotless pale tight jeans." Could have done without that.
robynlets's review
3.0
This is a weird book that I read because it's one of the few contemporary accounts of the sociopolitical life of Mexico City. It taught me a lot, and I appreciate that the latter quarter of the book is a forensic journalistic account of the disappearance of a dozen young people and the struggle by their families for justice. My main critique is that I think that author is a creep when it comes to women (by which I mean he evaluates the physical appearance of every woman and *young girl* he encounters throughout the book) and overall just kind of an unlikable dude with so-so politics. I give it a "meh" to an "ugh".
hypops's review
3.0
A journalistic “vertical slice” of Mexico City during the summers of 2012 and 2013, Francisco Goldman’s The Interior Circuit mixes memoir, historical chronicle, and investigative journalism. It is filled with simultaneously entrancing and horrifying accounts of the history and violence of Mexico City, but the prose style is so dry that it can sometimes read as cold and detached.
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