Field of Vision by Michael Jarvis ***

Jake Mayfield is an angst-ridden photographer on a small Caribbean island searching for ... well ... I'm not sure what he is looking for.

Every day I go a little farther, working my way up to the cloud forest. Every day I see less sun and spend more time hiking. But the forest is so sublime that I've begun to experience a disorientation ...

The clear focus in Field of Vision by Michael Jarvis is imagery. As Jake Mayfield searches, he voices his photographer's field of vision.

She lies beside me, breaks baked brie over her breasts, flakes of crust litter her skin like confetti and warm cheese drools like blond mud over mounds, drops of apricot almond glaze trickle on the tips and soak nutty-sweet to the skin inside the cloth, quantity far surpassed by flavor, a buttery blob of cheese in my throat and stains of glaze licked from the ends, the sheer lace encasement a barrier now and not to be removed by me the feeder, for I understand my only task.

Jake is hard to pin down. Beyond his photographer's vision, he passes through the rest of his experience without volition or comprehension. This island serves up an ample supply of sex and violence, both of which Jake, like a fantasy explorer, accepts as his due, along with the food and shelter that others provide him along the way

In the end, I found the poetic vision of the tropics more satisfying than Jake's hipste-cool odyssey through a jungle of graphic sex and violence.

I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads First Reads giveaway on September 7, 2013. I received the book September 11, 2013.