"If Flannery O'Connor were a bad boy living in the French Quarter, she'd be writing stories like these."
-Andrei Codrescu James Nolan's début collection of fiction marks a writer of mordant dark humor, out of the tradition of Flannery O'Connor and John Kennedy Toole. Most of these hilarious yet disturbing stories are set in the author's native New Orleans, with its island mentality of denial. Like Blanche DuBois and Ignatius Reilly, the desperate characters in the book's three short-story cycles cling to their illusions against all odds. Creole spinsters, transvestite plumbers, gamblers, food critics, demented matrons, retired morticians, survivors of hurricanes and the sixties, all rush toward fierce reckonings with the end of eras, families, and lives. Mothers and sons are everywhere, engaged in a tug-of-war across the generations, but always with a perverse denial in the face of historic or personal defeat. With wicked satire and moving lyricism, Perpetual Care presents an insider's view of a mysterious city, along with startling revelations on the Scorpionic themes of sex, death, and regeneration.
"The city's long conversation with itself has never been louder or more insistent than it is in these stories, with all their exuberance, despair and wit. In the only post-Katrina story, "What Floats," a man returns to the city after the storm only to confront the most painful memory of his past: the death of his mother. Confronted by utter desolation, he wonders, "What in the world must it feel like to stay on in the pure abandon of this place?"
And thanks to James Nolan, we know.
We know why we stay."
- Susan Larson,
excerpt from her review of Perpetual Care: Stories
Click here to read the entire review!
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