by JamesWilcox (Author)
A brilliantly observed, hilarious and poignant social satire. Wilcox's Tula Springs novels (there are six and characters overlap) have the narrative litheness of an Armistead Maupin and the piercing tragi-comic insights of Edith Wharton.
No scandal has ever rocked Tula Springs, Louisiana, like the discovery one morning of a dead body sprawled beneath L. D. Loraine's window. No matter that L.D. is 91 and nearly bedridden - the evidence clearly points to him as the murderer of the nasty Mr Versey, his lackadaisical home attendant. Before justice can be done however half the staff of City Hall, a suspicious old curmudgeon of a judge, a home ec teacher, an uninspired dentist, the principal of a disreputable school, several adulterous housewives and even Miss Undine's living room are implicated... Standing firmly and stubbornly at the centre of the action is the great niece of the accused, Olive Mackie. Outraged on learning that she too has been drawn into the case she decides that desperate action is called for and heads out to restore her reputation and to singlehandedly set things straight in the beleaguered town.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
Edition: New e.
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 04 Mar 1996
ISBN 10: 1857024273
ISBN 13: 9781857024272
Praise for Wilcox:
`Like Anne Tyler, Wilcox writes with a compassion best expressed in the willingness to laugh at his characters' foibles.'
New York Newsday
`Mr Wilcox has real comic genius.'
Ann Tyler
`Wilcox conveys the paradoxical sense that human life may be random and absurd but that to capture that absurdity exactly in just the right words is to conquer it.'
Mirabella
James Wilcox's stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Avenue and Louisiana Literature. He is the author of five other novels, Modern Baptists, North Gladiola, Polite Sex, Sort of Rich and Guest of a Sinner. He is a graduate of Yale University and a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship.