Savages by Don Winslow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Savages—Review on Goodreads
Here goes.
First thing’s first: I like Don Winslow’s style. It’s quasi-playful without being merely silly. It’s smart without being intellectual, has a rhythm and pace that speeds the reader along, apropos to the subject-matter. A coupla guys living the good life have to deal with some of the evil the good life affords.
There’s sex and drugs and violence. I don’t know if Winslow’s style would be conducive to a novel that didn’t have sex and drugs and violence. A novel about drugs always has violence, I guess, and sex, and although a novel about sex doesn’t require drugs or violence, for my money it would get pretty boring pretty fast, Self indulgent. Savages borders on self-indulgent, but Winslow’s isn’t day-dreaming, he’s telling you a story, so I’ll forgive him that.
Lots of info about the Mexican drug cartels, and one hopes, lots of speculation about how the accompanying violence and greed could spill into the US. (And we better pray it’s just speculation, and not the revelation of really good research, because otherwise, we’re in big trouble.)
That the novel was made into a movie is a no brainer. By Oliver Stone, no less. Optioned before Winslow was even done writing it, no less. And yeah, the plot and characters are movie-thriller flat. Who cares. It’s a fun ride, and as I said, the style’s the thing anyway.
So as always the best praise I can think of is that, having read Savages, I want to read more by this guy. But I don’t know if I’m spoiled. Don’t know if his other stuff will have the same wit and creativity. Maybe I should have read something else first. Maybe I should have gotten ahold of that Winslow gestalt and seen riches in Savages I missed because of his treatment of text.
I’ll let you know. In the meantime, you should read Savages. It was perfect for my condition: on vacation, on a chair on a porch in Kauai guzzling beers and recovering from pounding surf. Fair warning: that’s no exaggeration about the sex and drugs and violence.