Kevin Smokler reviewed Salvador by Joan Didion
Review of 'Salvador' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
Essentially a long magazine article about El Salavador during the military dictatorship of the early 1980s. Piles of murdered bodies lie alongside a limping bureaucracy and a populace that must act like citizens of a Shirley Jackson short story and blithely skip along while ignoring the mounting terror around them.
The reporting and cool analysis is vintage Didion and therefore magnificent. The Central American policy is a bit too wonky (and a bit too stuck in 1982) to be all that readable or interesting. But still, this book is fast reading but potent, like a gulp of firm scotch that builds in your throat to a slow, angry boil.
Very worth it.
