Book review - "Dark Green, Bright Red" by Gore Vidal

Early Vidal work shows his inexperience - it takes a while to get going, and he's slightly awkward with how he strings his words together, and there is too much time at the beginning with the not very interesting American soldier who likes to look at himself in the mirror (it's like "come on, Gore, really..."). But its an interesting subject matter once the revolt starts it gets better (even if you never really shake the feeling that Vidal doesn't care much for the locals either, especially the Indians); it also improves with all the interior monologues esp. of more interesting characters like the General and De Cluny, the General's French speech writer. It feels as though Vida relates more to de Cluny, with his talk about the art of writing, than the lead, Peter - its stronger on writing than military stuff. For a book about a revolution it is disappointingly low on excitement - only at the end, when things go pear-shaped, does it become thrilling (which I guess is the point, but even when things were going well for the General and so on, couldn't they have made it more exciting) - and even this section throws away opportunities. Its as though all the boldness went into the concept of the CIA being manipulative, and now that's old hat the book lacks something.