ISBN: 0807129674

People either get Nancy Lemann or they don't. Those who do practically worship her for her deeply elegant, eccentric, hilarious novels about displaced Southerners. Those who don't tend to… Plus…

People either get Nancy Lemann or they don't. Those who do practically worship her for her deeply elegant, eccentric, hilarious novels about displaced Southerners. Those who don't tend to complain that she's too repetitive. That she is, and a good thing, too. In her lovely and odd novel, Malaise, Lemann uses repetition as she does in all her books: as a wellspring for both humor and meaning. Her characters turn phrases over and over in their minds, as if trying to solve them. In Malaise, those phrases concern California, the death of the British Empire, old age, and graciousness. Fleming Ford is a New York journalist, born in Mississippi, whose husband's work takes the family to Esperanza, a San Diegoesque resort city not far from the Mexican border. As always, Lemann's writing wildly conflates the personal and the geographical. Fleming shuns Esperanza as the ends of the earth. At the same time, and not just coincidentally, she falls in love with Mr. Lieberman, an old Englishman who represents the decorousness that she has left behind. Along the way, we get some astonishing writing, like this aside about a visit to Death Valley: "It's so godforsaken, so historical, and so pure that you are curiously elated. It may be called Death Valley, but the minute you get there you are subsumed by a vast and incongruous gaiety." Addled by nostalgia and despair, Lemann's characters are forever bumping into a vast and incongruous gaiety, and telling us about it over and over contemporary,literary,literature and fiction Literature & Fiction, LSU Press<

ISBN: 0807129674

If there is one thing I love in a man," says Fleming Ford, "it is decrepitude." An Alabama native who has just relocated from New York City to southern California so that her geologist hu… Plus…

If there is one thing I love in a man," says Fleming Ford, "it is decrepitude." An Alabama native who has just relocated from New York City to southern California so that her geologist husband can search for water in the Mojave Desert, Fleming is forty, the mother of two children with another on the way, and in a state of malaise brought on by the enervating euphoria of her new environment. In her former boss, seventy-something Mr. Lieberman, a recently widowed British mogul and a fellow-exile, Fleming finds the comfort of Old World grace and assuagement of her nostalgia for lost times and places. Will she risk her honor and marriage for the love of an aging tycoon as she capitulates to the West Coast's seductive paradise amid the palm trees? contemporary,fiction,literary,literature and fiction,mystery thriller and suspense,romance Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Louisiana State University Press<

ISBN: 9780807129678

If there is one thing I love in a man," says Fleming Ford, "it is decrepitude." An Alabama native who has just relocated from New York City to southern California so that h… Plus…

If there is one thing I love in a man," says Fleming Ford, "it is decrepitude." An Alabama native who has just relocated from New York City to southern California so that her geologist husband can search for water in the Mojave Desert, Fleming is forty, the mother of two children with another on the way, and in a state of malaise brought on by the enervating euphoria of her new environment. In her former boss, seventy-something Mr. Lieberman, a recently widowed British mogul and a fellow-exile, Fleming finds the comfort of Old World grace and assuagement of her nostalgia for lost times and places. Will she risk her honor and marriage for the love of an aging tycoon as she capitulates to the West Coast's seductive paradise amid the palm trees? Malaise Lemann, Nancy, Louisiana State University Press<

ISBN: 9780807129678

If there is one thing I love in a man," says Fleming Ford, "it is decrepitude." An Alabama native who has just relocated from New York City to southern California so that her geologist hu… Plus…

If there is one thing I love in a man," says Fleming Ford, "it is decrepitude." An Alabama native who has just relocated from New York City to southern California so that her geologist husband can search for water in the Mojave Desert, Fleming is forty, the mother of two children with another on the way, and in a state of malaise brought on by the enervating euphoria of her new environment. In her former boss, seventy-something Mr. Lieberman, a recently widowed British mogul and a fellow-exile, Fleming finds the comfort of Old World grace and assuagement of her nostalgia for lost times and places. Will she risk her honor and marriage for the love of an aging tycoon as she capitulates to the West Coast's seductive paradise amid the palm trees? Media > Book, [PU: Louisiana State University Press]<