Gringos

by Charles Portis

Book Overview

Charles Portis's Gringos is a truly brilliant, wonderfully bizarre novel by one of our great American novelists.

Jimmy Burns is an expatriate American living in Mexico who has an uncommonly astute eye for the absurd little details that comprise your average American. For a time, Jimmy spent his days unearthing pre-Colombian artifacts. Now he makes a living doing small trucking jobs and helping out with the occasional missing...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1585670936
• ISBN13: 9781585670932
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

a great joy

Gringos was the first Portis novel I read; though nowhere does it approach, say, the perfection of the first few pages of Norwood, it remains, in some ways, my favorite of Portis's five novels. In Gringos, as in all his novels, Portis communicates to us the narrator's extraodinary compassion for a cast of misfits and losers. In the end, then, Gringos doesn't show showcase its author's justly-praised comedic gifts. It's also deeply moving.

Another rollicking adventure from an American master

The one constant in a Charles Portis novel is the tone: dry, deadpan, but never condescending. Often the tone serves as a buffer between the characters and the harsh, arbitrarily violent world around them. In Portis's first novel, _Norwood_, the strategy is largely successful, though in Portis's second and most famous novel, _True Grit_, violence assumes a fundamental place in the narrative.Portis's latest novel, _Gringos_, about a group of American expatriates in Mexico, may be his most disturbing yet. Although it begins slowly, introducing us to a seemingly random menagerie of locals, dropouts, and hippies, the novel builds to a brutal, unforgettable climax in the remote Mexican jungle._Gringos_ is alternately funny and brutal, yet leaves an unexpectedly sweet aftertaste. It's a rollicking, adventurous masterpiece from one of America's finest living novelists.