Gringos

by Charles Portis

Book Overview

Charles Portis's Gringos is a truly brilliant, wonderfully bizarre novel by one of our great American novelists.

Jimmy Burns is an expatriate American living in Mexico who has an uncommonly astute eye for the absurd little details that comprise your average American. For a time, Jimmy spent his days unearthing pre-Colombian artifacts. Now he makes a living doing small trucking jobs and helping out with the occasional missing person situation--whatever it takes to remain "the very picture of an American idler in Mexico, right down to the grass-green golfing trousers."

But when Jimmy's laid-back lifestyle is seriously imposed upon by a 90-pound stalker called Louise, a sudden wave of "hippies" (led by a murderous ex-con guru) in search of psychic happenings, and a group of archaeologists who are unearthing (illegally) Mayan tombs, his simple South-of-the-Border existence faces a clear and present danger.

"Gringos is Portis's subtlest, funniest, and most valuable novel for its depth of inarguable wisdom." --Wells Tower, GQ

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1585670936
• ISBN13: 9781585670932
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Overlook Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

a great joy

Gringos was the first Portis novel I read; though nowhere does it approach, say, the perfection of the first few pages of Norwood, it remains, in some ways, my favorite of Portis's five novels. In Gringos, as in all his novels, Portis communicates to us the narrator's extraodinary compassion for a cast of misfits and losers. In the end, then, Gringos doesn't show showcase its author's justly-praised comedic gifts. It's also deeply moving.

Another rollicking adventure from an American master

The one constant in a Charles Portis novel is the tone: dry, deadpan, but never condescending. Often the tone serves as a buffer between the characters and the harsh, arbitrarily violent world around them. In Portis's first novel, _Norwood_, the strategy is largely successful, though in Portis's second and most famous novel, _True Grit_, violence assumes a fundamental place in the narrative.Portis's latest novel, _Gringos_, about a group of American expatriates in Mexico, may be his most disturbing yet. Although it begins slowly, introducing us to a seemingly random menagerie of locals, dropouts, and hippies, the novel builds to a brutal, unforgettable climax in the remote Mexican jungle._Gringos_ is alternately funny and brutal, yet leaves an unexpectedly sweet aftertaste. It's a rollicking, adventurous masterpiece from one of America's finest living novelists.