Another excellent novel from Ben Fountain that combines vivid descriptions, a propulsive plot and thoughtful geopolitical and historical intrigue and depth.

Wow--Ben Fountain cut no corners putting together the gigantic (in scope and page count) tome that is Devil Makes Three. A delicately crafted political thriller meets literary fiction, Devil Makes Three picks up in Haiti in 1991. When a shocking coup takes place, an American expatriate loses his business and sets off to find new means of surviving amidst the violence of the new regime. We meet several other characters whose stories diverge and converge throughout the story, pulling in new players, new politics, and new dangerous discoveries.

Intricately plotted, if at times a bit meandering, Devil Makes Three will engage readers who are willing to commit to the scale of Fountain's narrative. The complex characters, political machinations, and questionable morality running through the story carry Fountain's plot all the way to the end.

This is not my typical kind of read, but it caught my interest due to the fact that it’s set in Haiti after the coup that unseated Jean Bertrand Aristide in 1991. The reason for my interest is that my son is a pastor and he has taken eight trips to Haiti on a mission building a church, taking shoes for children as well as educational tools and toys, as well as creating clean water systems and more.
The plot of this historical fiction focuses on Matt who owns a dive shop. He takes clients/customers to a remote area called the Zombie Hole. There is where he shows people how to snorkel, and he loves what he does…until a new government takes over and he no longer can do what he loves. This new government is not a good one that cares about/for its people. It’s truly a criminal element that is self-serving to its own political agenda. Matt doesn’t simply lie down and take his unwelcomeness at his dive shop; instead, he finds a way that puts his life in danger in order to get supplies that he needs.
I found the historical aspect of the novel very interesting, heartbreaking, and dehumanizing. I am happy that I read this one so that I understand in many ways what my son faces potentially when he takes a group of people to Haiti (including 2 of his own children and 1 of his nieces). They always have to check which areas are totally unsafe to travel totally avoid and he’s learned a new culture and many different ways of how they are socially.
I also enjoyed the narrator of this novel. I found it beneficial to read the ebook along with listening to the narration, which for me helped me better understand and gave it clarity. The narrator's reading was excellent and I would listen to him again.

You could almost believe, if you didn’t know the novel’s actual authorship, that Ben Fountain’s “Devil Makes Three," about the coup that ousted Haiti’s Aristide, was a hitherto unknown work of the late Robert Stone, whose particular metier was to register the often disastrous consequences of U.S policy abroad – the mayor’s unattached head that turns up in Fountain’s real-life Haiti could as well have turned up in Stone’s fictional Tecan. And the violence that erupts at the rally in “Devil” when the U.S. looks to install its own favored candidate in the wake of the coup was reminiscent for me of how chaos also carried the day in the climactic right-wing rally in Stone’s “Hall of Mirrors.”
But perhaps even more evocative for me of Stone in Fountain's novel is the edgy writing with its strong philosophical resonance. This, for instance, from a character as she's frantically calling embassies when she thinks her brother and her lover have been snatched up by the Haitian military or police after the coup: “she had Adorno's theory of instrumental reason to guide her, i.e., the principle that Enlightenment reason had been reduced over the twentieth century to purely utilitarian thinking.” Or this, later: "Hegel took for his ipso facto the tidy analytical unit of the nation state and gave himself a giant pass with that."
Intriguing or off-putting, such formulations, depending on your appetite for philosophical reflection, but however smoothly or not they go down for a reader, they do establish a clear intent, as with a Stone novel, to make Fountain’s novel something more than mere entertainment.
Not that the novel isn’t exciting enough as straight adventure, with how calamitously the coup disrupts the lives of the novel’s four main characters, principally American Matt Amaker, who is dispossessed of his scuba business in “an up close and personal encounter with the Haitian army.” Worse, he will come to be incarcerated along with an associate, Alix, as Alix’s sister, Misha, frantically works to secure the two men's release.
Misha is one of the novel’s two principal female characters, the other being perhaps the most interesting character for me, a sort of GI Jane (“tall, blond, strapping broad-shouldered from four years of college crew”) who is ostensibly an attache at the American embassy but, also reminiscent of a Stone character, actually a U.S. intelligence operative feeling out the coup to see how it might be milked to serve U.S. interests.
Evocative it all was for me not just of Stone’s fiction, but also of the time my junior year in high school when world events first really impinged on my consciousness, with news in all the papers of the ouster and assassination of Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, an affair implicitly if not explicitly backed by the U.S. The beginning it was of my education that U.S. intentions abroad weren’t always so pure, a lesson driven even more pointedly home for me several years later, when the U.S. mired itself in Vietnam, an American misstep which also raises its head in Fountain’s novel, where a veteran of the war expresses pride that, unlike many of his disgruntled fellows, he never threw back his medals.
But beyond the real-life memories and evocations of Stone, what stood out most for me about Fountain’s novel was its depiction of Haiti, “poor … loud, voodoo-doing Haiti,” which, with the horrendous state of hospital conditions depicted for its babies, was evocative for me of conditions reported today in Gaza, where, sadly, it’s not just fiction but reality that children, as usual in such situations, are bearing the brunt of human madness.
Wrenchingly timely, in short, Fountain’s novel, though weakened somewhat for me by an occasional excess of detail about things such as the breakdown of a compressor or the physical dimensions of a galleon cannon (a full page or so of this).

Just lovely, lovely writing. Vivid characters. An introduction to a dark moment in history I was unfamiliar with (United States' complicity in the tumult in 1991 Haiti). Though a bit long, this reader found himself re-reading passages for the simple beauty of the language. Go in with an open mind and come out...edified. Recommended.

This was a tough one. Scuba diving treasure hunters and CIA skulduggery in Haiti, post-coup, should have been a slam dunk; we're in the territory of Robert Stone and Graham Greene, which is a territory I very much love. And the book comes out of the gate feeling like it will live on my shelf; maybe the writing is a little more airport novel than literature, the characters (with one striking exception) sanitary-flawed rather more than raw. But it moves along, and sucks you into the world.

Then.

Fountain's ambition to write an Epic has him tripping over his own feet. The narrative lurches and digresses into fascinating but unexciting historical detail and academic theory before returning to the actual story, then lurches and digresses again. I wanted to drop the book several times, but then it would reengage me again, only to meander thirty or forty pages later. By the time I realized there'd be few creature pleasures amid the spinach and implausible romantic interludes, I was too far along to bail. I don't regret finishing, but there wasn't enough reward for the time spent. And the climax wasn't much of one.

There's a damned good book inside this very long, not that good book. So I'll average it out to 3.5 stars.

https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/books/2023/09/19/review-dallas-author-ben-fountains-new-novel-is-a-challenging-but-rewarding-read/

Devil Makes Three by Ben Fountain is an it and intriguing political thriller.
My first time reading Fountain’s work and I’m very happy to say I loved it.
His writing style kept me intrigued and flipping the pages.
The characters are entertaining and very well developed.
I enjoyed the vivid story. I could picture everything so perfectly.
After reading Devil Makes Three I will definitely be keeping an eye open for his next titles.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

Thank You NetGalley and Flatiron Books for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

This is a big challenging multi-faceted novel set in Haiti immediately after the coup that toppled Jean Bertrand Aristide in 1991 and the year that followed. It's centered on Matt, who has a dive shop, a partner, and a woman he loves and finds his life turned upside down. And then there are the others, the CIA officer, the politicians, the people. It helps, I think, to do a bit of quick research/history refresher to fully appreciate what Fountain has done. This was a chaotic period and he's done a good job of capturing that, Reading this takes perseverance- it's long, perhaps too long-and you can easily get lost with the characters and events,. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC, For fans of literary fiction and those interested in Haiti.

This was my first novel by Fountain and this book had me turning all 500+ pages as fast as I could keep up. I got confused at times, but overall, I learned a whole lot and enjoyed the story.

Devil Makes Three is set in Haiti during the overthrow of Aristide and focuses on the impact the coup has on the people just trying to live their lives and get by. Unfortunately I had a hard time following the plot of the book and the characters, who I liked, seemed to get lost in the confusion of the story. I enjoyed the author’s previous work, but this one just wasn’t for me. Thanks to NetGalley for a chance to read and review this book.

I attempted to read this book because I adored Ben Fountain’s earlier novel but I am just not in the right head space to read a disturbing novel. I think books like this, that document the atrocities of humanity are important, though, it just was not the right book for me at the moment

I found this book to be slightly convoluted. I found it interesting yet I felt like I didn't understand a bunch of it. It was well written, Ioved the imagery. I definitely need to read up on more of Haiti's history as until this book I knew not a single thing.

Matt runs a dive shop and takes swimmers to the remote and gorgeous diving area called the Zombie Hole. He loves his job and the people that he introduces to snorkeling. A new government has taken over Haiti, however, and he is no longer welcome at his business or on the island. The criminal element has complete control of the island and people are dying in the streets.

Going into town for supplies is so dangerous he is taking his life in his hands. This story describes the frightening life of the common individual in Haiti. While reading the book, I became extremely distressed about the people and situation on this island.

Ben Fountain has a wonderful writing style but I found the book so disturbing that I could not continue to read. My heart goes out to the people of Haiti! 3 stars – CE Williams