Customer Reviews

Port Tropique

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It was a dark and stormy night. In the banana republic of Port Tropique guns, money, sex, power, and politics are shuffled slicker than a Vegas blackjack dealer. All the dames have red lips and cold eyes and cruise the bar without leaving their seat. The men wear panamas drawn down over their eye and speak in grated muffles. The local authorities are unwashed louts and everything is sweat and heat and panting in the dark. It's every ginjoint in every movie in the world rolled into one little book with nothing to do with Ben Franklin. Great for a Saturday afternoon.

Barry Gifford is a poet (in fact) with a will to communicate. He drew each chapter as an artist, framing his stalled antihero with keen intelligence. We have become so saturated with standardized images and imagined protocol among gangsters/CIA bagmen/gun runners that it takes an author of rare imagination to write immediate prose that pulls us from the cookie-cutter version, back into the human mind. I've lent this book to many friends and they all raved, except the last one, who failed to return it. I wish he or she would deliver the goods.

Port Tropique is an atmospheric novel about a down-on-his-luck American (Franz) who becomes a smuggler in a fictional Central American country. As luck would have it, a revolution topples the country's government. Trapped by his own malaise in a failed society, Franz has few guideposts to direct him home.

Author Barry Gifford crafts a novel with great characters and atmosphere. Franz is somewhat likeable, but anyone who has been through middle age can sympathize with his feelings. You cheer for Franz, in spite of his many flaws. Gifford renders Port Tropique in vivid color. You feel the steamy heat, taste the cold beer, and hear the gunshots.

Port Tropique's weakness is plot. Gifford does not quite know what to do with Franz, so the ending is unsatisfying and feels "tacked on." The book's plot is similar to the plots of existential films (such as The Passenger). Franz runs in circles, and Gifford implies that even if he tried to shape his destiny, it wouldn't make a difference, anyway.

I am not as "high" on Port Tropique as are the other two reviewers. It is a short, engaging novel. (One can easily read it in a sitting). But, given its potential, the novel is unsatisfying. Port Tropique is worth a look, but I can't give it more than three stars.