Lost City, The [Import] [Paperback]

Henry Shukman (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Abacus Books; Reprint edition (2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0349120366
• ISBN-13: 978-0349120362
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,742,175 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exactly what I want from a novel, March 3, 2008

By 

John Thorndike "Author: The Last of His Mind:... (Athens, OH United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lost City (Hardcover)

They say a novelist should write the book unique to him, the book no one else could write. After fifty pages of The Lost City---even twenty pages---I felt like I'd entered a singular world, one in which only Henry Shukman could lead me on. Partly it's the exotic locale of the book, which moves from Peru's lowlands to highlands to cloud forest. (When barely twenty, Shukman wrote an earlier book about Peru, Sons of the Moon.) Partly it's the language, shifting without a blink from casually poetic and introspective, to pure impulse and drive. And partly it's the inventive range of characters, which include a young English soldier, Jackson Small, recently dismissed from the army after a mishap in Belize, a louche consular official who is slowly decomposing in the English diplomatic service, and a young Peruvian boy Small befriends, without ever being sure if it's a good idea, or if he'll have the strength to be loyal to the boy.

The plot gathers power smoothly, almost unseen, like the moon coming up behind one's back. There's danger, there's a romance, there's constant movement through the emotional underbrush. Some might read the book for the pure adventure, but for me it's the quieter moments that light up the story: the drug lord who shows an unexpected need for approval, the consular official's desperate fantasies about Small's girlfriend, ("if he only could get her to see his tender side and accept him, he would give her anything, there was nothing he would deny her. She could even have affairs, whatever she wanted, so long as she would only give herself to him, give him a home"), and the quiet, determined Peruvian boy---the book's most self-reliant character---who not only sticks close to Small, but repeatedly saves him from disaster.

The plot is sometimes driven by coincidences, of which there are perhaps too many. But the advantage of Shukman's strong writing is that we gulp them down. We see them, as Jackson Small does, as no more than fate. For as long as I read the book, his fate became mine---which is exactly what I want from a novel.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Beware of boredom, April 28, 2010

By 

Ron Johnson "Spokane Man" (Spokane, WA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Lost City (Kindle Edition)

At first I couldn't figure out why it was taking me so long to read this book. The subject matter is interesting and the characters were not cookie-cutter people. The problem is that the author wants to impress himself with his word-smithing ability. Just as I found myself interested, he would spin 3 pages of description that totally distracted from the plot and the flow. I found this book more digestable by skimming a few pages at at time to move forward. After enduring this, the ending was just another dime-store-novel cliche. If you want a real page-turner nonfiction that reads like a fiction, read The Last Days of the Incas. That book has 1,000 times more adventure and intrigue then this book. Don't wast your time on this.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars St Thomas Aquinas said, the secret to life is having a quest !, May 1, 2009

By 

Steven T. Yellen "STEVE YELLEN" (EL PASO TEXAS) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lost City (Vintage Contemporaries) (Paperback)

St Thomas was right. Jackson Small is on a quest. A quest in search of a city has told about by his budddy, who has passed away and said goodby to this sad and beautiful world. If Larry McMurtry's story of quest in "Lonesome Dove" stirred your soul, you must pick up a copy of Henry Shukman's "The Lost City."

STEVE YELLEN