Angels by Denis Johnson

Feeling buoyed by my love of Train Dreams, I moved right onto this as I also had it on my shelf. It is a very different novel (and was Johnson’s debut) and I actually almost put it down about forty pages in. I just didn’t know if I had the emotional wherewithal for it because this is one of those utterly depressing novels that is pretty much guaranteed to fill you with abject despair. It’s about “two born losers”, Jamie and Bill, who meet on a Greyhound bus. Jamie is fleeing her husband with her two daughters, and Bill is just… being Bill I guess. Travelling from city to city, stumbling in and out of dive bars and motels and taking part in the occasional criminal activity for some quick cash. For the first forty pages I thought the whole novel would be like this; vignettes of these two getting up to little more than nothing, drinking and taking drugs and being generally unpleasant to each other and everyone else (any scene involving the little girls hurt my heart physically). But then the plot really takes off, after one of the most distressing sexual assault incidents I’ve ever read in a novel (HUGE trigger warning on this whole book for just about everything). I don’t think I’m really selling it to you, but you do need to be prepared for it.

But the PROSE. It really lights up this book, screwing into your brain, shackling your emotions to these down-and-out characters. Johnson clearly had close personal experiences with people like Jamie and Bill because they jump off the page. But it is in the final fifty pages or so that the real gut-wrenching stuff comes in. I wouldn’t want to spoil it, but I felt like I’d been hollowed out when I put it down. Another excellent book that asks if anyone is truly irredeemable and shines a light on those most vulnerable in American society. Just be prepared for some pain!