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mcz96's review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Love DJ but this was rough
jmcook's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
johndiconsiglio's review against another edition
3.0
No one pens an apocalypse like the late-great Denis Johnson. His kinda-terrifying 1985 armageddon looks like the Vietnam war—set in a nuclear-fallout Florida Keys with help from Melville & Bob Marley. We’re amid tribes of survivors, including Cuban fishermen, Black “Israelites” who pray to Allah & an epileptic clarinetist who’s memorized the Constitution & leads an orchestra without instruments. Johnson’s invented a hybrid-English dialect of Spanish, Jamaican patois, tech buzz & song lyrics. Not exactly accessible & sometimes grisly. But it has a hallucinatory power to wake the dead. “The first day of his father’s death was over.”
scheu's review against another edition
3.0
The last sad remnants of humanity cling to civilization in the Florida Keys. Not the most memorable of post-apocalyptic novels, but notable for having been written during the height of my own era of nuclear fears, the mid-1980s.
eaterofworlds's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
nickreallylovestoread's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
This book could have been about 150 pages longer. It's a strange feeling reading this, as the ending feels random, like Johnson decided one day to stop this project, and ended it that day. Fiskadoro is a dark, post-apocalyptical novel about a young boy's journey through multiple walks of life in a new civilization after a nuclear holocaust. Like his other works, Johnson excels at examining character, and Marie, Mr. Cheung's mother, is my personal favorite in this story. If you read Train Dreams and thought the main character's reclusive nature needed a tropical setting, then check this out. There's some great prose here, but plot-wise didn't do it for me.
greenblack's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
truelizrose's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
jodyjsperling's review against another edition
3.0
I’ll read this book again eventually. It was tough and deliberate. Certain moments awed me. Much confused me. I need to slow down and contemplate this book next time I read it.
runningbeard's review against another edition
3.0
So much seems to be going on in this book that perhaps it's crammed too tightly in just over 200 pages. Every memorable and vivid character is their own "stranger in a strange land" as identity, history and memory seem tossed into a wonderous flux, and yet...