Customer Reviews

Spiritland

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Having been a frequent visitor to LOS ("land of smiles" AKA Thailand) since my first trip in 1994, I find the premise to be highly believable. While I admittedly have little in common with the Khao San Road backpacker set, I have borne witness to the often vacant eyed legions trudging up and down Sukumvit Road and even have an acquaintance or two that came very near to going over the edge.

Where Alex Garland's "The Beach" is fantasy, Nava Renek's "Spiritland" is reality. Starting the day at 3PM with a "joint" and a Singha, staying up all night getting trashed while watching bootleg videos on outdoor TV's and repeating the cycle. No worries. When the money runs out it is easy to believe that a person will do anything to avoid the "jumbo" home.

I really liked everything about this book and found the believability factor to be quite high with the possible exception of the "gorgeous" French girl working in the Thai owned go-go bar in Chiang Mai. While it is known that there are Caucasian women (mostly from the former Soviet Union) that ply their trade in Thailand, I have yet to hear of any that actually danced at a go-go.

I am quite a fan of the genre (Asian theme fiction) and read Spiritland in two sittings. I only hope that author continues along the line.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you gave up your job, school, your apartment, your belongings, and bought one of those cheap airplane tickets to India or Thailand? This novel lays it out for you in vivid imagery and straightforward old fashion storytelling. The main character, Maddy Foster, makes that brave move-gives up everything--but finds herself adrift in Thailand with nothing to hold on to or believe in. Soon after arriving, Maddy becomes obsessed by a notice on a traveler's bulletin board where parents are searching for an American girl just like herself. In order to fill her void and give meaning to her trip, Maddy embarks on an informal search for this lost girl, while simultaneously letting her own life fall into some kind of private hell. Along the way, Maddy gets caught up with Western drug dealers, Vietnam Vets, prostitutes, and other ex-pats who have chosen to give up their relatively comfortable lives in the first world to establish lives dictated by fate, risk, and chance in a foreign country. In the end, Maddy's redemption comes from the fact that she's kept a diary and through the diary she can recreate the story that becomes the novel.

This novel's a page turner, full of lots of details about backpacker culture and the Thai's attitude about turning their country over to tourism. Sit down to read Spiritland when you have a few hours to give over to an enchanting and frightening trip to Southeast Asia.

CUNY girl falls off the grid and into a bottle of Meikong Whiskey with her layabout boyfriend in a hostel on Khao San Road, Bangkok. On p. 1 she sees a poster for a missing white chick-- like they put up in the States for lost dogs and cats. This foreshadows a plot mechanism for a search for Cara Duryey. This supplies a "reason" to drink, drug, wander about in semi dangerous places, and write a book. A good description of a spirit house is rendered early on. Thai history is communicated insightfully and swiftly. And, it is refreshing to read a novel about Bangkok not about randy farangs whose raison d' tre is chasing bar girls. Our intrepid traveler, Maddy, boogies to Chiang Mai. The influence of Western culture recedes; no more rock and roll. In a page out of MIDNIGHT EXPRESS Maddy visits the harrowing prison and gets up close and personal with the skeletal, virus plagued American dealers and mules. Her companion, Ben, it is explained-- was left as a child with relatives in Portland, Or. while his hippie parents ran off to an artists colony in Mexico. Poor Ben self-medicates his psyche with drugs and alchohol. Ben decides to ride the H Train full time and heads up north solo with his beady pupils and greasy hair in pursuit of his grail-- pure cheap heroin. It is appararent SPIRITLAND is a roman a clef for Nava Renek i.e. you cant make this stuff up. Maddy gets into a wierd groupie dynamic with a doomed ex-pat in Chiang Mai prison. This narration is disquieting and disconcerting. Maddy cultivates an opium smoking habit which blossoms into paranoia coupled subsequently with malaria. Maddy wanders up to a backwater hole-in-the wall village named Fang; about to embark on adventures with Vietnam vet drug dealers suffering from PTS. Stories about mental illness are not "entertaining" to Buk Guru. Nataly Portman's schizophrenia in BLACKSWAN is not entertainment in my view; also, mental illness brought on by recreational drug use is not my idea of a good read. Our traveler Maddy hangs out with Jake, the 50 year old Vietnam Vet with PTS disorder. Jake likes to get young white kids to mule heroin so they can wind up in a Thai prison. Maddy figures she may as well hook up with him, too. Maddy chases the dragon with Jake and then mules some heroin. She travels to Malaysia solo and dries out a little. She re-news her visa and hangs out with her French prostitute buddy Juliette and they snort heroin too. NR should make a note-- next time she decides to travel she should do it with adult supervision. In the end the book degenerates into heroin junkies in Thailand-- all about mulin it, dealin it, comin up, comin down, paranoia, and Aids. This is not my idea of a good time. The descent into hell from using heroin can happen just as rapidly right here in the good ole USA. You dont have to be a "traveler" in the Land of Smiles to have this experience. This book is not for me. Oh yeah, before "Maddy" gets deported for dealing smack she gets to turn Judas Brutus on all her friends and serve them up on a platter to the Thai police so all Maddies friends get to rot in Chiang Mai prison while she jets back to her life as an adjunct professor in CUNY college. Pssst! Maddie-- the IRS pays rewards if you turn in all your friends who cheat on their taxes. Oh, bye the bye, Cary Duryea, the girl on the wanted poster, has been hiding the whole time in plain site as a no good skank dealer who is riding the main line and hates her parents and disappeared herself. Cary gets to be Maddy's buddy. They get to be the Thelma and Louise of low level H dealers. Oh, Maddy gets to turn Cary in too. A cautionary tale? Or-- just a book that didn't need writing.

Spiritland is an accessible, thoughtful and moving account of a young American woman's journey through the darker regions of Thailand. The narrator is impressionable, to say the least, yet she cares deeply for the people around her. She befriends a Westerner in a Thai prison, a French dancer in an exotic nightclub, and a runaway from San Francisco who has fallen into the drug-running life. These experiences build to a critical point, as the main character, Maddy, realizes that her situation is beyond her control. But her hardship is tempered. The author's talent and clarity of expression guide the reader through to the surprising resolution.

Horror stories abound with cruelties and absurdities that are no match for the chilling revelation of a clear eye. A reasder could be any one of the characters as naturally created as your face in the mirror. With props kicked away, the story is told through the action of men an dwomen running away to get more out of life and nourish their spirit only to fall into frightening false illusions that destroy them. Thailand as you've never seen in travelogues or CNN becomes the prison closing in on them an dmaking money off heir idealistic searchings. In Spritland, a dramatically unfolding title, a generation is as indelibly marked as the cherry orchard owners. Only this generation is ongoing an dshowing what we re doing to each other in the extravaganza. The novelist Arthur Nesesian hit it on the nose when he wrote, "Spiritland moves with all the intensity and subtlety of an Asian tiger -- it is at once both beautiful and powerful. The protagonist, Maddy Fosters wavers in a mdern day purgatory between the ancient and the addicted, ancestrual spirits and the spiritually lost. Her exquisite descent into hell is recorded with such poetic realism it reads as if Dante himself had updated Let's Go Thailand 2002."

Renek guides her readers through Spiritland with the sure touch of an experienced author. Maddy Foster is an unremarkable American girl who leaves her safe existence to embark on a nightmarish existential quest. In this circumnavigation of self, Maddy loses her way in the horror of a Thailand that is choking in the death-grip of an invasion by the farangs from Europe and America. It is a crumbling world she traverses, in which individuals struggle to find, or to cling to, the broken remnants of the human spirit. While the desperate souls drowning in the morass fatalistically accept the 'bad luck' that is their fate, Maddy discovers solace in a secret forest shrine in which an overgrown Buddha persistently pushes its 'spiraling stone headdress above all the jungle debris'. One surprising day, she finds that it has been cleaned and decorated with a garland of fresh flowers, by an unseen hand.
The plot is tight, with all the drama, suspense, and excitement of a John Irving novel. The writing is clear, yet Renek writes with an evocative ability usually reserved for poetry. Maddy is swept along a chain of events that gains a certain inevitability as death picks off the strangers, friends, and lovers who circle around her, and as she herself totters on the brink of destruction. Will she find the inner strength that she needs to survive? Renek's original travel story has the inner power to blow you away- read it to expand your horizons, read it to be entertained, read it to be challenged. You will be the richer for the experience.

Renek's accomplished a rare feat in creating a suspenseful page-turner that's drenched with gorgeous descriptions and beautifully evocative language. That combination not only makes for great reading, but also skillfully underscores an important tension: On the one hand, Maddy Foster, the novel's heroine, floats through an idyllic, almost dream-like setting. On the other, she's constantly skirting the edge of a vaguely sinister darkness. There's quite an interesting ensemble cast here - each character realistically crafted and just as realistically unpredictable, and Renek's masterfully captured the unique seductions of traveling through exotic and yes, slightly dangerous locales. Spiritland's an exciting journey and you're likely, like Maddy, to throw yourself indulgently into this adventure, only to find that things turn out in a way you never expected.

Spiritland is an accessible, thoughtful and moving account of a young American woman's journey through the darker regions of Thailand. The narrator is impressionable, to say the least, yet she cares deeply for the people around her. She befriends a Westerner in a Thai prison, a French dancer in an exotic nightclub, and a runaway from San Francisco who has fallen into the drug-running life. These experiences build to a critical point, as the main character, Maddy, realizes that her situation is beyond her control. But her hardship is tempered. The author's talent and clarity of expression guide the reader through to the surprising resolution.

Spiritland is one of the most entertaining books I've ever read. I couldn't put it down. It's the story of an American woman who ditches her life in America and goes traveling in Thailand. Maddy's dangerous and riveting adventure is beautifully described in a way that makes you feel the humidity and wonder what could possibly happen next. I highly recommend this captivating novel!