Review of The Laughing Monsters

The Laughing Monsters is not an altogether tedious read. Its origins in Johnson’s own reporting on the situation in Africa gives its rendering of character and setting a tacit authenticity. The plot has its moments of high tension, and the narration by Nair succeeds in immersing us in the story. The prose Nair employs is nimble enough to accomplish these larger purposes, although there are few of the kind of stylistic flourishes for which Johnson became much admired in his earlier books. In The Laughing Monsters Johnson seems content to produce an “entertainment” of the kind Graham Greene claimed to periodically write, a novel that engages the author’s characteristic themes, but in a manner that seems safely familiar.

My review of Denis Johnson's The Laughing Monsters.