It's very hard to put this book down. Mutis resembles no one writing today, his prose is immaculate and his stories indescribable. He is one of a kind. This is a treasure; one only wishes there were more.

This may be the most beautifully written, wise, and fun book I have ever read. Maqroll is the perfect companion: he goes everywhere, knows many remarkable and delightful people in every spot, and speaks with wisdom, joy, and sadness all at once.
Each sentence is a gem: taken together, they create a world that transports the reader into a world of adventure, danger, love, friendship, and insight.
Imagine Cervantes mixed with Pynchon, with a little Groucho Marx thrown in: this is a work to savor and Maqroll is a wise and loving guide to a world of breath-taking beauty, where each day holds new treasures.
This is the closest thing to a perfect book I have come across. It is a true classic, as readers of Spanish literature have known for some years.

READ THIS BOOK! If Dylan and Pablo Neruda collaborated, this would be the result. Lyrical, funny, heartbreaking stories set around the fringes of cities and backwater towns. Do these places even exist anymore? There is a homeric quality to the stories that transforms the flotsome and jetsome lives of the charaters. I cannot say it enought, READ THIS BOOK

Not as good as Goldman's first novel but if you're looking for an enjoyable piece of literary fiction, you could do worse.

As I read the first dozen pages or so, I found the descriptions seemed, well, too "purple". Then Goldman seemed to hit his stride. Goldman's primary source, as he reveals in the Acknowledgements, was a sociological book entitled "Trouble on Board" (author's name escapes me now). I'd read it in '94 as a source for a university paper I was then writing. From this source and his own emotionally descriptive touch, Goldman has managed to do three things, one aesthetic, two sociological, with "The Ordinary Seaman": 1. Entertain! Particularly with respect to mood, tense, perspective (limited omnicient), description, and language (the purple prose becomes simply good, original. I wondered if Goldman wrote early drafts 'in Espagnol'); 2. Show the plight of the international seaman on "foreign flag" or "flag of convenience" ships; 3. Provide for Norte Americanos a voice for the "illegal immigrant" experience. This last he does most effectively, and is one of his stated objects, especially in the way in which the "Urus'" poor inmates view NYC. Estaban, the novel's protagonist, is a character of great passion, an odd admixture of the young veteran Sandinista and the innocent, literally and figuratively adrift in an America that is, to him, an alien world and culture, but has the energy to prevail. A GREAT read.

This is a very fine novel. The plot is tightly woven; the writing is crisp and even, sprightly, occasionally darkly humorous, and always interesting. Its characters are fascinating portraits drawn on a carefully crafted palette.

Mr. Goldman has done a truly remarkable job and this work should be widely read. His story line, the travails of a desperate group of dirt-poor Nicaraguans, is dispensed in calculated doses. I learned just enough about each helpless participant that I was always felt tuned for more information. Mr. Goldman links the civil war so carefully into his novel that it never intrudes, instead it adds constant, new dimensions. While seemingly effortless, the author's construction is beautifully coordinated.

Masterful blending of each character yields an astonishing, cleaver plot. Although Estaban appears to be the protagonist, he is always balanced and never intrudes on the whole. He acts much like the anchor line of the Urus, the ill-fated boat, which itself appears to be Mr. Goldman allegory of life. Or is this simply too much a stretch, beyond the author's intentions? I think not. Mr. Goldman succeeds where so many others fail; this is a terrific, powerful, carefully crafted, interesting novel.

At first I was distracted by the colloquial Spanish Mr. Goldman includes in dialogue and descriptions. It was a trial for my two years of college training. I soon understood many of the words, much of them if only from the situations described. In time they became actually pleasurable and added to the authenticity. I think this is a remarkable feat and the author deserves to be congratulated on his successful technique.

I do not read books to find faults. However, sometimes they appear as deficiencies that distract from the effects authors set out to achieve. In Mr. Goldman's cases there are none. This book is a fine effort and very interesting, well worth the time spent reading, and it is highly recommended.

The sights, sounds, tastes described in this book truly evoke the streets and life of Guatemala City, while the parts about politics, war, and social relations in Guatemala are also right on the mark. Portrays the levels of complexity of Guatemalan society, and has a neat mix of US suburban life with Latin American culture. (including expressions combinining Jewish and Guatemalan terms, my favorite is "oy vay, vos!") I was disappointed, however, towards the end of the book when it just degenerates into the narrator's narrow-minded obsessions and no longer considers the bigger issues it included earlier.

Although there have been many complaints about the author's writing, I had no trouble following this book. This guy writes like Guatemalans talk (he has no discernible train of thought, jumps from subject to subject and goes on way too long)and his narrator is annoyingly shallow and self-involved and feels way to sorry for himself, so it was like going out on any given occasion and hearing a typical sob story from a guy who's had too much to drink... I felt right at home! He got all the expressions and all the scenery right.. the description of street kids sniffing glue while looking in store windows made me laugh and cry, because it's so familiar and sad. But I must admit that the most fun I had with this book was passing it around to my family and friends and then figuring out who the characters really were (and if you're Guatemalan, you can). Fijate vos, I really enjoyed this one...

A lot of people have criticized this book for being too long-winded and off topic, but I disagree. Long Night of White Chickens tells the story as you would get to know someone so that by the end of the book you feel you really know Flor de Mayo. In real life, when you meet someone you don't learn everything about the person write away; it can take years for a strong relationship to develop. Throughout the book, Goldman introduces tantalizing tidbits about Flor's life and you slowly begin to understand who she is while at the same time realizing how complicated a character she actually is and that you could never know everything about her- just like a real person. At the same time, the book has an exciting plot and a thought-provoking ending.