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A review by heyitschessa
Salvador by Joan Didion
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
2.5
I appreciated this for her experience through the lens of an American visiting El Salvador during a super volitile time. It just felt like... This isn't the book you want to start with if you're looking to understand historical context or a larger view of what happened during the war.
This was written in 1982. Things were not good. If you're American at this time though, and you're seeing newspaper articles and seeing snippets of TV news pieces, and you want to learn more? This is probably a good read. I feel like I lacked the understanding of historical background to "get" a lot of this. Like current day, if I read a similar book about say Ukraine or Palestine, I'd recognize some names or dates or events that would be like "oh right I remember that, so this is what was happening!".
But 40 years after the events, reading this book? It doesn't have the same effect as I'm sure it did in it's time.
Also, annoying, and the reason I rounded a half star down - Didion has a tendency to write looooong sentences. They have many commas, parentheses, semi-colons. Over and over. To the point where I found myself rereading pages because by the time I got to the end of a weirdly long sentence I forgot what it was about. So distracting.
This was written in 1982. Things were not good. If you're American at this time though, and you're seeing newspaper articles and seeing snippets of TV news pieces, and you want to learn more? This is probably a good read. I feel like I lacked the understanding of historical background to "get" a lot of this. Like current day, if I read a similar book about say Ukraine or Palestine, I'd recognize some names or dates or events that would be like "oh right I remember that, so this is what was happening!".
But 40 years after the events, reading this book? It doesn't have the same effect as I'm sure it did in it's time.
Also, annoying, and the reason I rounded a half star down - Didion has a tendency to write looooong sentences. They have many commas, parentheses, semi-colons. Over and over. To the point where I found myself rereading pages because by the time I got to the end of a weirdly long sentence I forgot what it was about. So distracting.