[1] The novel depicts an American writer and his female companion on their trip to Ecuador and its backcountry.
[3] The New York Times notes that the novel explores the "texture of psychologically plausible character, real places, and so on" under a "contemporary naturalism".
"[2] The book touches on the drug and sex trade that accompanies the crude oil industry in Lago Agrio, in contrast to the suggestion of mysterious and yet undiscovered plants in Ecuador that have powerful affects on the mind and sexuality.
[1] For example, The New York Times concluded that cultural insensitivity and tone "blot what is otherwise an enjoyable and worldly allegory of the pitfalls of literary success, which retains some of the grandeur of its model.
"[4] The Guardian reviewer James Buchan described the novel as needing "a journeyman editor [who] would have cut out the repetitions, quotations, boasting, name-dropping, purple passages, dreams, hallucinations, score-settling, bombast and sex fantasies.