Ángeles

Jamie Mays has left behind her marriage and the trailer park where she lived, and is traveling with her two young daughters on a bus crossing the United States. Bill Houston, a nomadic, tattooed ex-Marine, delinquent, and afflicted with a few beers in his duffel bag, fleeing an existential void for which he sees no escape. In this reality, marked by the inertia and improvisation to which defeated lives lead, embarking on a road trip filled with motels, sex, alcohol, and violence with a drunken criminal you've just met seems like any other option. As dazzling as it is bleak, Angels is Denis Johnson's debut novel. From Oakland to Phoenix —where Bill's chaotic family of criminals lives— it portrays the underbelly of an 1980s America disillusioned with the old American Dream. The angels are a last glimmer of hope, adrift beings who still retain some innocence, but who are condemned to suffering, crime, and madness.