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    Mañana: A Novel
    Mañana: A Novel
    Mañana: A Novel
    Ebook225 pages4 hours

    Mañana: A Novel

    By William Hjortsberg

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    The life of an American hippie in Mexico is upended by a gang of ex-cons in this thriller full of “wild surprises” (Carl Hiaasen).

    All Tod remembers when he wakes up next to a dead prostitute is that he had his first shot of heroin the night before. He and his wife, Linda, were partying with their new neighbors, a trio of parole violators who fled to Mexico after robbing a Beverly Hills jewelry store. Now the place is empty, stripped clean except for Tod’s hunting knife, which is covered in blood. Did he kill the woman, or was he left behind as the fall guy? Convinced that his junkie friends abducted Linda to keep her from talking to the police, Tod buys a gun and prepares to do whatever it takes to get his wife back before he makes a run for the border.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateMay 12, 2015
    ISBN9781497680661
    Mañana: A Novel
    Author

    William Hjortsberg

    William Hjortsberg (1941–2017) was an acclaimed author of novels and screenplays. Born in New York City, Hjortsberg’s first success came with Alp (1969), an offbeat story of an Alpine skiing village, which Hjortsberg’s friend Thomas McGuane called, “quite possibly the finest comic novel written in America.” In the 1970s, Hjortsberg wrote two science fiction novels, Gray Matters (1971) and Symbiography (1973), as well as Toro! Toro! Toro! (1974), a comic jab at the macho world of bullfighting. His best-known work is Falling Angel (1978), a hard-boiled occult mystery. In 1987 the book was adapted into a film titled Angel Heart, which starred Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke. Hjortsberg’s work also includes Jubilee Hitchhiker (2012), a biography of Richard Brautigan, American writer and voice of 1960s counterculture.  

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    Reviews for Mañana

    3/5

    16 ratings6 reviews

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    • 1/5
      I received a free advance review copy from the publisher through the Goodreads First Reads program.I'm on page 57 and I really can't muddle through this.There is way too much boring detail for what should be an exciting adventure. A paragraph describing how he gets from the outskirts of Guadalajara to the Hotel Fenix in the city center reads like a tourist guidebook: "turned right...blah blah...turned left, etc...."There are also a lot of flashbacks and sometimes it's hard to tell the now from the then. I don't want to spend any more time trying to sort it out.
    • 3/5
      I am not sure what the point of this book was. And why write a book in 2014-2015, that takes place in the late 1960's in Mexico. Todd the narrator is stoned pretty much throughout the whole story. That was believable. The rest f the story was just silly, stupid situations that were horribly unlikely. Nt sure why this book got any press, much less the amount it did.Not a believable or a very good book.
    • 2/5
      I have mixed feelings on this book. I enjoyed the author's style. His phrasing immediately drew me into the story. For me, the strongest aspect of this story is setting. The author puts us right with the characters, sparking all our senses so that we feel as if we're there in Mexico with them. Then there's the not-so-good stuff, which mostly overshadows the positives. There is very little character development here. The story is written in first person, from Tod's perspective, yet virtually the only things we learn about him are that he likes to travel and get high. We're given flashbacks of the couple's past together, which is the only way we learn anything about their relationship and history. The plot doesn't go anywhere until past the halfway point. The first half of the book is Tod bumbling his way through Mexico in search of his wife, but keeping himself too stoned to reasonably function. When the plot finally does pick up speed and become interesting, something happens with Tod's wife that I just couldn't reconcile with the image portrayed of her in the first half of the story.The sixties counterculture was about a lot more than marijuana and acid trips, yet none of this is ever referenced. We don't learn about the couple's experiences in San Francisco, who they mingled with or how they felt about the social and political aspects. We don't know their political leanings. I have to assume Tod is a draft dodger, but there are no war references at all so my assumption is based solely on the fact that he doesn't appear to be a Vietnam veteran. This book is set in one of my favorite eras to read about, and perhaps the lack of detail colors my opinion. In the end, there is very little substance to cling to. It's one of those books I could have put down without ever finishing.
    • 5/5
      Mexico, 1968. An American wakes up covered in blood, next to a dead female acquaintance with her throat cut. His wife and three other companions have disappeared and taken all their stuff with them. He sets out in his VW Camper, "Bitter Lemon", to find them--and discover whether he is a murderer, since the last thing he remembers is a heroin needle going into his skin. His drug, beer, and tequila-filled quest takes him to many places and he meets many people. This book succeeds in so many ways. First, as a travelogue, it creates a vision of Mexico that will have you reaching for old guidebooks or perhaps trying to see some of the places on Google Maps. Second, as a tale of a somewhat morally ambiguous character surrounded by many who are even more ambiguous, there is a dark fascination that pervades the story. It all works because Hjortsberg's writing is so good. Only a couple of times does it rise to near poetic heights, but there is hardly a false note or unnecessary word in the entire novel. While the first half proceeds at what some might think to be a leisurely pace, the atmosphere the author creates is so real, so hot, so dusty, so tinged with alcohol and drugs, that the book is hard to put down. Never does Hjortsberg lose the narrative drive, however. As events unfold, we watch Tod, the first-person narrator, narrative stumble from one bad scene to another, and the suspense builds until a well-done finale. What a pleasure to see Hjortsberg produce something that creates the same type of totally immersive experience his classic FALLING ANGEL did over 35 years ago. Highly, highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      William Hjortsberg is a true master of noir. This book races along at breakneck speed, with it’s tale of sex, drugs, violence and double crosses. It grabs you from the beginning to end. The characters are believable and well fleshed out. If noir is your thing, I highly recommend this book.
    • 2/5
      You know it must have been one hell of a party when you wake up the next morning with a dead hooker in bed beside you. That’s what happens to Tod one morning in the spring of 1968 after a wild night of partying in the Mexican beach bungalow he shares with his wife and three less-than-reputable neighbors. To make matters worse, everyone else, his wife included, have cleaned out the place and gone. Tod quickly realized there were four things he needed to do; take a shower to wash the blood off, get as far away from Barra de Navidad as he can, find his wife, and find out who killed Frankie (the prostitute). And that is pretty much what happens for the remainder of the story, adding in various and sundry illegal activities thrown in in an unsuccessful attempt to add excitement. Tod scours Guadalajara and other Mexicans cities and villages looking for his compatriots. He smokes weed. He sells weed to earn spending money. Eventually he tracks the others down and asked them who killed Frankie. Guns go off. People die. Ordinarily this would be exciting stuff. As it turns out, though, it is no big deal as there is absolutely nothing appealing about any of the characters in this book. Most readers won’t be too upset by their passing. The writing was marginal. There was no shortage of similes such as “my hangover thundering inside my skull like ninepins falling in hell’s bloody bowling alley” or “snoring like Romulans.” I think I’ve seen every episode of Star Trek a dozen times and I can’t for the life of me remember ever seeing a Romulan sleeping, let alone snoring. Klingons I could imagine snoring but Romulans, not so much. Oh well, my point is that William Hjortsberg’s even make Mickey Spillane’s similes look good.One thing in this book did impress me. Having attended college in Mexico for six months in the 1970s and visited many of the places Hjortsberg described, I can say with no equivocation that he absolutely nailed the bohemian lifestyle of the young American expats during those years. The only thing that I encountered frequently that he didn’t mention was army roadblocks and vehicle searches. I can only assume that Tod’s battered VW microbus wouldn’t have stood up to the kind of scrutiny an army patrol would have subjected it to.Bottom line: I loved the quirky cover of this book and appreciated the trip down memory lane Tod’s travels through Mexico inspired. Beyond that, the book wasn’t worth the time I invested in it. 2 stars, tops.*Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review book was based on an advanced reading copy obtained at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. While this does take any ‘not worth what I paid for it’ statements out of my review, it otherwise has no impact on the content of my review.

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    Mañana - William Hjortsberg

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