Praise for The Ordinary Seaman

“This book . . . is about powerless people who are victimized by social forces, and it brilliantly depicts the various ways they cope with it, in their actions and their inner lives. It is rendered with tremendous vitality, intelligence, and sweetness. That combination alone makes it rare in modern American letters.” —Mary Gaitskill, Salon

“A stunningly well-written second novel from a major talent of great style and soul.” —The Miami Herald

“A marvel of a book—vast, literate, human and entertaining.” —Oscar Hijuelos

“Goldman’s art lies in the juxtaposing of ordinary desires and extraordinary circumstances to create a pattern of wonderment; he has written an epic of the misplaced and misguided . . . a novel . . . with a rare largeness of heart. Here many apparently disparate things get ac­quainted, as happens in port cities. Goldman brings Spanish and En­glish into a beautiful partnership. His descriptions of sex and bodies somehow evoke both the epicure’s taste and the starved lover’s raging appetite.” —Scott L. Malcomson, The New Yorker

“Goldman’s extraordinary second novel, The Ordinary Seaman, [is] a book that approaches mythic dimensions. . . . A fascinating, relentless story of psychological and moral complexity that confirms his stature as one of the brighter lights on the literary scene.” —Thomas Christensen, San Francisco Chronicle

“The novel is absorbing and moving . . . touching and provocative.” —The Atlantic Monthly

“A strange and suggestive historical novel of the present moment, The Ordinary Seaman turns out to be a surprisingly optimistic book—a story of escape, not confinement, an adventure instead of a disaster. The crew’s ordeal almost fades in the bright light of Esteban’s discovery of America—an America of immigrants still alive to its original potential.” —Edwin Frank, The New York Review of Books

“[The Ordinary Seaman] is an imaginative tour de force, a spectacular achievement by any standards. . . . Powerful . . . intelligent and engrossing. The complexities of the narration, the author’s stunning use of language (both English and Spanish), his careful probing of brotherhood . . . all are superbly rendered in Goldman’s expansive story. . . . [The Ordinary Seaman] is far from being an ordinary novel.” —Charles R. Larson, Chicago Tribune

“[In] The Long Night of White Chickens, Francisco Goldman showed himself able to operate successfully on several levels at once. . . . The Ordinary Seaman is actually even more ambitious. . . . A tightly wound narrative of hardship and survival . . . a powerful exploration of human behavior . . . as dazzling as it is exactly right . . . and memorably so.” —James Polk, The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Francisco Goldman is an immensely talented writer and possesses sure literary instincts.” —Alvaro Mutis

“Francisco Goldman does what few can: he creates a world so real that when you have turned the last page, you say, ‘I’ve been there, and I will never forget it.’ . . . Often very funny and ribald, riveting because it is so generous and inventive . . . Here, a corner of Brooklyn becomes the exotic and foreign experience, and through Esteban’s eyes it is as mysterious and alluring as Tangiers.” —Sandra Schofield, The Dallas Morning News

“By turns absurd, moving, comic, and bawdy, The Ordinary Seaman tackles the genre of the seafaring novel as it hasn’t been done in New York City since Melville. . . . If the original seamen ever encounter Goldman’s version of their story, they’ll be no less enthralled than the rest of us.” —Allen Lincoln, Time Out New York

“Keenly observant and brilliantly unnerving fiction . . . a tale of almost surreal intensity . . . Goldman activates the tormented memories of his intriguing characters, relating their heart-stabbing stories in prose glinting with images both troubling and startlingly beautiful, reflections of his unflinching moral vision and impassioned inquiry into questions of conscience and love.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

“Stunningly good . . . [a] powerful novel.” —Jeff Baker, The Oregonian

“This is the epic voyage in a post-modern world. . . . Goldman gives his story both the inevitable feel of fable and the gritty texture of reality. . . . Aboard the rusting wreck of the Urus, Goldman discovers a new route in the great tradition of seafaring literature.” —Nancy Klingener, The Miami Herald

“Powerful . . . a searing picture of human vulnerability and courage . . . This novel should establish [Goldman] securely on the literary map.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A tightly woven tapestry . . . Goldman’s powerfully charged writing brilliantly limns this allegory of immigration and abandonment.” —Harold Augenbraum, Library Journal (starred review)

“Francisco Goldman is a state-of-the-art, contemporary hybridist . . . [a] deep evocation of the tormented entanglements of world capital and banana republic. . . . Goldman’s playful, tense-switching narration . . . gets so deep inside his character’s memories that you feel their collective nausea, which, like the shaky start of a peyote trip, is a prelude to the unfolding of painfully beautiful truths.” —Ed Morales, The Village Voice

“Goldman’s acclaimed debut, The Long Night of White Chickens, proves to have been no fluke; its successor is an equally compelling saga. Even more memorable is Goldman’s fresh and moving take on such matters as longing, love, cruelty and fellowship, probed in a poignant and original narrative.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“The Ordinary Seaman is a contemporary odyssey, the chronicle of a journey that will not occur . . . brilliantly imagined. . . . The most striking aspect of The Ordinary Seaman is its language, a baroque Espanglés . . . which Goldman so deftly handles . . . the story of how a society comes into being . . . a Latino version of the settlement of America.” —Alberto Manguel, The Independent (London)