I read the Atlantic Monthly's scathing review of this before buying it, and in retrospect it seems like an eminently unfair judgment of this fantastic book. No, this is indeed ambitious, but Johnson by and large pulls it off. It moves surprisingly quickly; I didn't find it particularly difficult to keep up with the vast mosaic of places and characters and chronologies and time frames; and it has an undeniable emotional heft. It would be worth a second read, and I think some day I may well go back and do just that, after I've had some time to let it sit with me.

I've had The Stars at Noon sitting on my shelf for some time, and I will be turning to it in the near future. Johnson's language is economical, and at the right moments, devastating. Though it is set in Southeast Asia in the 1960's (primarily), it's relevance to the current geopolitical realities is obvious. But mainly, it is a fantastic story: though its length suggests an "epic," it is more an in-depth exploration of a very small, though important, story. It also has a lot to say about the creations of fictions, the places those fictions intersect with "reality" (especially the fantastical world of foreign policy, with all its feints and mythologies), and the destruction of lives (both self-inflicted and plotted against others) that accompanies massive tragedy. I was impressed.