Customer Reviews

Lightning On The Sun

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

A review of the content of this book is really meaningless, because the real appeal is the writing itself. It's the kind of book which grabs you even before the action starts, simply because of the way the words flow off the page into your head. It's "comfortable." And as tragic as it is, knowing the life of the author makes it moreso.

It's grit with a brain. Action with a soul. Your bookmark will fly through its pages and you'll FEEL the characters as they become caught up in the web they've trapped themselves in.

It's a terrific read, an "experience" and a tragedy that there won't be more.

Having read the review in the New York Times that compared this book to the work of Robert Stone, I was waiting for its release anxiously. When I saw the blurb on the cover that mentioned Conrad, I couldn't make it home fast enough. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. Although not as edgy or quite as well written as Stone, it was up to all my expectations. It is very impressive for a first novel. In fact, I literally couldn't put it down and read it in one day.The author has a great style and was able to describe a number of different locations very well. His plotting and people in Phnom Penh were very vivid and colorful. His descriptions of the New York Racquet Club were so good they made me laugh out loud. I didn't think his characters were quite as edgy or manic as Stone's. He was able to create alot of suspense in the plot because you knew that something bad was about to happen at any minute. This kept me turning those pages. The obvious comparision is to Stone's Dog Soldiers, but I saw some of his A Flag For Sunrise in it as well. If you like this book and haven't read those two, please do so immediately. I'm not sure what happened to Mr. Bingham, but it is a real shame that we will not have more from him.

I just read this and I loved this book. And I have also read all of the other writers to whom Bingham has been unfavorably compared. I have to say that the ability to recognize crushingly simple bits of convergence -- oh hey look, this is about an expatriate in Southeast Asia and that was too! -- is no substitute for actual cleverness or critical faculty. The problem with treading anywhere near the emotional or physical territory of cult figures (and they are that, more than they are Greats) like Hemingway and Greene, is that cult-devotees are very vicious about defending the tribal pooh-baa at the center of their dimestore religions.

If this book suffers in any way, it actually suffers from the same disease that afflicts Robert Stone's recent books: idiot publicists determined to sell the books as thrillers, because the publicists -- or whoever makes the decision -- think that this will make men buy them. But these books are not thrillers, and readers aren't stupid. Unfortunately, too many readers also aren't quite bright or compassionate enough to see that the unfair sale is not the author's fault -- no way did the author have any intention of writing a thriller. Lightning on the Sun is a literary novel that happens to be about a heroin deal and set mostly in Cambodia. Read it as a literary novel and be amazed. I also wholeheartedly recommend Bingham's short-stories, which are nasty, dark, profane, and uplifting.

This first and sadly last novel by the deceased Author Robert Bingham begins as an absolute chore to grind through. However if you stick out the first quarter or so you will be rewarded with some fine writing. It is sad that the drug that plays a role in this book caused the death of the man who wrote it, for there was a great Author being introduced.

The book's theme is not new and that is largely responsible for the slow start. I also don't know that readers are comfortable and familiar enough with Cambodia and its Politics for that aspect to be anything more than confusing. The story is dark, and if the word sardonic were the equivalent of a color, the end of the spectrum approaching black would be the reference point.

Asher who is our protagonist is probably the most annoying persona, think of a whining Nicholas Cage character. (It would make a great movie) His life has been one long series of almosts and not quites, and his scam to return to normalcy and home requires he use and abuse a variety of characters. And there is a wide array to enjoy. Ever had your luggage lost and wished you could take it out on the Airline. In one of the book's purely comedic moments an Asian Crime Boss does just that, and it is brilliant. Asher's sometimes soul mate, Harvard Graduate, and living on the fringe is very well done. What could have been a hopelessly cliché bimbette role, become a street-smart woman of letters who has a savage wit, and is said to be full of, "Verities". She also wields a MAG Light with finality. This is not the only character that starts with the expectation of being hopelessly derivative. The Author seemed to enjoy taking what others have done, and then reworked them to show just how well he could write.

The end of the book allows Asher a shot at redemption perhaps even nobility. However when he says, "I would prefer to stand", it's a powerful statement and a brilliant close to the book. I really do wish the Author were not consumed by that of which he wrote, he was clearly a man with a potentially great future of literature still before him.

Had Borges re-written Don Quixote, it might have been something like Bingham channeling Dog Soldiers in this book. The book seems most in the spirit of the Goldie Hawn movie Foul Play (because of the dwarf, I guess) and Jim Thompson's surreal stuff (The Getaway, Savage Night) rather than, say, Heart of Darkness and The Comedians. It's true about the characters, though: they're all anorexically limned and not a one of 'em has the magnificent nihilism of the boys 'n girls in Pure Slaughter Value. The book seems unfinished and rushed in spots; notably, G-Spot Julie's visit to Katherine's apartment, Reese's sister's wedding, and the trope of the bats at the end. Like James M. Cain, much of the dialogue is terribly stilted (try reading Asher's Merchant Prince ramblings aloud). There's much athletic sex, though (mercifully) not in the Colin "Afterburn" Harrison vein. Its moral issues are the same as those in Three Kings. To Bingham's (or Gerald Howard's) credit, the book reads very smoothly, despite the lamely convenient plot.

I read "Lightning on the Sun" about a year ago after having lived in Cambodia for several months (as an aside, during that I time I had learned of at least one young expatriate who died of alcohol poisoning and knew many others whose existences were consumed by alcohol, drugs and prostitutes; the depiction of the lifestyles of [specific members of] Cambodia's foreign correspondent community in "Lighting . . . " is not, strictly speaking, a work of fiction). I liked a number of things about the book. For starters, the title is just beautiful. In the wake of a tropical rainstorm, I once had the opportunity to witness lightning on the sun - it is not a sight one quickly forgets. As regards the substance, "Lightning . . . " is a stylistically-written and ultimately quickly read novel. The central character, Asher, is well-developed and sufficiently quirky as to provide for a fascinating character study. The book's closing is - if not necessarily unexpected given the sardonic, nihilstic sneer that pervades much of the narration - unusual and even somewhat strangely satisfying.

My biggest gripe, though, relates to the plot coincidences that many other reviewers have cited and the purpose they ultimately serve. It only took me a couple of months of living in Cambodia to realise the plot of "Lightning on the Sun" is simply a superimposition of Asher, Julie and their drug deal onto actual events that occured in Cambodia during the mid-1990s. The grenade attack in the park outside the National Assembly occured. The shooting out of the tires of a Royal Cambodian 737 by an infuriated (and very well-connected) passenger occured. And yes, among other events described in the book, a number of foreigners were actually kidnapped off a train outside the southern town of Kampot, taken to the top of a nearby hilltop by the name of Phnom Bokor (which still features the KR-effected remains of a Catholic Church and a Hotel/Casino) and, following the issuance and non-fufilment of ransom demands, executed. Many of the "characters" introduced in the book (the editors of certain Phnom Penh publications, the individual that shot out the tires of the Royal Cambodian Airlines 737) are also actual people (with slight modifications in the spelling of their names) who have have been known to behave in rather similar ways to that described in "Lightning on the Sun".

So, if the plot does seem to rest on some rather unlikely coincidences, then there's something of a reason for that - namely, to enable Asher and Julie to navigate themselves through some of the most sensational events and characters of Cambodia in the 1990s. "Lightning on the Sun" is to "Forrest Gump" what "The Tesseract" is to "Pulp Fiction". One can debate whether or not it was appropriate for Robert Bingham to re-dress actual events and characters for packaging in a novel or whether "Lightning of the Sun" is even honest story-telling, but hopefully his book should spur something of a greater interest in the recent (and continuing) activities of foreign expatriates and political elites in Cambodia. For those interested in pursuing that interest, a good (though ultimately flawed and commonly criticized) place to start is Amit Gilboa's gonzo potrait of expatriate Cambodia circa 1997, "Off The Rails in Phnom Penh - Inside the Dark Heart of Girls, Guns and Ganja".

Some advance publicity on Robert Bingham made me eager to read this novel, and at first I was held in a kind of thrall by Phnom Penh, a city I recognized every step of the way in his initial descriptions, for it is a city I know. Yet the characters fail to grip the heart or mind. A kind of scattered expat sensibility develops and some atmosphere works, but Bingham is just getting near some kind of heart of darkness in this first novel. Of course with Bingham's early death there can be no development of the book's undeniable promise. Yes, there is promise and a murky kind of 90's pessimism, but comparisons to Graham Greene or Conrad are, in my view, unjustified.

.. I found the whole story too based on coincidence. The chance meetings in Cambodia I could some what accept but those in NY did not work. The story was too choppy, the characters did not evoke any sympathy from me, the college/speech sequences went too long and no where (yes yes I know it shows that our hero no longer fits - hit me with a sledgehammer). Too similar and far less powerful a book than Stone's "Dog Soldiers".

I found this book quite interesting (3.5 stars) and finished it in one sitting. After checking the other reviews, I expected to be disappointed, but wasn't. Not looking for a Conradian HEART OF DARKNESS, I was curious whether this author could draw me into the vortex of violence that accompanies drug trafficking, no matter what the country; the instability of the Cambodian government only adds to the chaos and confusion.

The expatriate journalists represent the vanity and cynicism of the media in the 90's, where random terror and piles of corpses are reported through jaded sensibilities, "psycho warmongers" and "body-count freaks".

The disintegrating food chain begins with Asher, a man in his thirties who has sold his soul to the twin pleasure-demons of drink and drugs. In Asher's warped perception, in an attempt to return to the United States, this last big score is being executed by himself as a "merchant prince". In reality, he is merely another rapacious drug vendor. His state-side partner in crime, Julie, initiates her role in the scheme that transports the drugs from Cambodia to the United States. But Julie chooses to eliminate the New York contact, and take charge of sale and delivery herself. This decision puts her in direct contact with the journalist who is the hapless courier. To escape the ensuing heat, she flies to Phnom Penh for a rendezvous with Asher.

Reigniting their physical passion, Asher and Julie undertake their departure from Cambodia like naive American tourists, allowing their own self-indulgence to blind them to risk. Asher, in particular, simply follows Julie's spirit of (mis)adventure, though fully aware of the dangers. In a political system rife with corruption, it is incomprehensible that Asher would believe escape without complication possible. But such is the nature of the addict, "it won't happen to me".

This novel afforded a fascinating view of one facet of a multi-layered experience. Rather than compare this work with Conrad, the style and imagery seems more parallel to THE BEACH by Alex Garland. I found THE BEACH to be an insipid portrayal of the pursuit of the "high life" by young travelers in Southeast Asia. While THE BEACH had similar setting and characters, LIGHTNING ON THE SUN painted a convincing picture of the deterioration of ethics that seems to plague young ex-pats who pursue escapist pleasures without thought of potential consequences.

I didn't have to like the characters to want to see how the story unfolded. Nor does it change my appreciation of this novel when I learned that the author himself died of a heroin overdose; rather, it adds to the authenticity of his descriptions.

This is a tough book, because it had a lot of elements I like, but there was just too much unreality and melodrama. Nothing in there is convincing and that's why (even though I finished it) it was ultimately unsatisfying.