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Panopticon

by David Bajo

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363680,466 (3.42)5
As the California borderland newspaper where they work prepares to close, three reporters are oddly given assignments to return to stories they've covered before--each one surprisingly personal. The first assignment takes reporter Aaron Klinsman and photographer Rita Valdez to an abandoned motel room where the mirrors are draped with towels, bits of black tape cover the doorknobs, and the perfect trace of a woman's body is imprinted on the bed sheets. From this sexually charged beginning--on land his family used to own--Klinsman, Rita, and their colleague, Oscar Medem understand that they are supposed to uncover something. They just don't know what. Following the moonlit paths their assignments reveal through the bars, factories and complex streets of Tijuana and Otay, haunted by the femicides that have spread westward from Juarez, the reporters become more intimately entwined. Tracing the images they uncover, and those they cause and leave behind, they soon realize that every move they make is under surveillance. Beyond this, it seems their private lives and even their memories are being reconstructed by others. Panopticon is a novel of dreamlike appearances and almost supernatural memories, a world of hidden watchers that evokes the dark recognition of just how little we can protect even our most private moments. It is a shadowy, erotic novel only slightly speculative that opens into the world we all now occupy.… (more)
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On the California/Mexico border a newspaper is closing shop and three of their top reporters are given different assignments, that end up having eerie similarities. One involves a mysterious motel and a missing woman. This novel has a dream-like quality to it, involving a surveillance-minded society, where cameras document everything. There is also a connection to the “feminicide" in Ciudad, Juarez where scores of women have been murdered over the past 25-plus years. I should have loved this book. It's premise and style fit me perfectly but the trippy and unfocused, narrative kept me from fully locking in. It just missed the “mark”. ( )
  msf59 | May 31, 2020 |
Overall, this just wasn't my type of book. As such, I don't have much to say on it other than I found the story to be too hard to follow and the writing style not engaging. I'm sure others might find the story interesting, but I just couldn't get into it. ( )
  eheinlen | Jan 27, 2012 |
To view the full review go to my blog The Well-Read Wife.

Regular readers will remember that I recently reviewed another Unbridled Books title, the excellent Safe From The Sea by Peter Geye. Now I am finding myself singing the praises of yet another Unbridled Books title, Panopticon by David Bajo. Bajo’s novel about violence and voyeurism in the California borderlands at times evokes Cormac McCarthy’s tale of Texan border violence in No Country For Old Men. At other times however…there is nothing else that can possibly compare to it. The story is so innovative, original and complicated that I have a hard time even explaining the plot to my friends. But I keep trying to because I liked the book THAT MUCH. ( )
  TheWell_ReadWife | Dec 26, 2010 |
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As the California borderland newspaper where they work prepares to close, three reporters are oddly given assignments to return to stories they've covered before--each one surprisingly personal. The first assignment takes reporter Aaron Klinsman and photographer Rita Valdez to an abandoned motel room where the mirrors are draped with towels, bits of black tape cover the doorknobs, and the perfect trace of a woman's body is imprinted on the bed sheets. From this sexually charged beginning--on land his family used to own--Klinsman, Rita, and their colleague, Oscar Medem understand that they are supposed to uncover something. They just don't know what. Following the moonlit paths their assignments reveal through the bars, factories and complex streets of Tijuana and Otay, haunted by the femicides that have spread westward from Juarez, the reporters become more intimately entwined. Tracing the images they uncover, and those they cause and leave behind, they soon realize that every move they make is under surveillance. Beyond this, it seems their private lives and even their memories are being reconstructed by others. Panopticon is a novel of dreamlike appearances and almost supernatural memories, a world of hidden watchers that evokes the dark recognition of just how little we can protect even our most private moments. It is a shadowy, erotic novel only slightly speculative that opens into the world we all now occupy.

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