Santiago and the Drinking Party: 9

Socratic inquiry and contemporary American skepticism each reckon with tropical mysteries in this haunting tale of community and solitude in the Amazonian jungle. Daniel, a tired and feverish young American traveler, pauses in the small village of Los Puertes Caidos and discovers a sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrifying world that he will never be able to leave behind. At the center of village life is the cantina where the don Santiago presides over the Thinking and Drinking Club, nightly posing metaphysical questions over a steady flow of beer and lemons. Scheming Hector Tanbueno, an Auruna Indian raised by missionaries from Ohio, walks the fringes of local society, declaiming in grandiose poetry, exploiting tourists and quietly menacing Daniel. Santiago's beautiful, unattainable daughter Angelina captures blue morpho butterflies on the riverbank, while Daniel's other love, Consuelo, serves drinks at the cantina and cares for him during his bouts with malaria. As Los Puertoes Caidos is beset by a series of bizarre hardships, primal mystery overwhelms the reasoning of both Daniel and Santiago. Morgan ( Aura ) evokes this magical realm with an unsentimental directness and simplicity. His characters, though strange, never become grotesques. And as the foreigner becomes inextricably tied to this outlandish, unknowable life, Morgan's tale achieves the resonance of myth. (Aug.)