Words 'n Wags

Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Jaimy Gordon is right up there on my list of incredible living authors--and a Michigan one at that--John Irving, Jon Clinch, Arthur Phillips and Alice Hoffman to name a few others who put words together in such moving ways that I feel as though I am in the same room with them...am breathing their air, smelling, hearing and tasting their world. On top of that they are all master storytellers.

Some of my favorite passages:

"The Mahdi even pranced, in all his big red cheer, wearing his burnished chest like a Torah breastplate. Mr. Boll Weevil went more stylishly, his mane braided and knotted and his feet prettily oiled, for he had a groom of the old school. The others? They were shufflers with their heads hanging down like plough animals, or tremblers, or rearers, their scared penises battened out of sight in purses of loose gray skin, underbellies awash in yellow foam."

"He tried not to hold it against the frizzly girl that his friend Two-Tie had used her to help him out this life. After all, when Two-Tie disappeared for good, he had Medicine Ed's markers in his pocket. Now she showed up at the Mound sometimes on a Sadday night and looked down on him and Pelter in the walking ring. He could recognize Two-Tie in them fuzzy tilted-up eyebrows, and all he can see is Mr. Two Tie lying on his face in a railroad culvert somewhere or under a heap of stones in the deep woods, or sliding down a mountainside with the tin cans and old stoves and deer parts that people dump over the side of the road. Might could be they never find him, and all Medicine Ed can think is, she don't even know he died for her sake or who he was. It's a tie in the blood, and yet still its no remembrance, no one to mourn or either grieve for him."

It's about family. What family is traditional any more? It's about passion. Is life worth living without it?  It's about the downtrodden. Aren't we all downtrodden in some way?

Just can't say enough good things about Lord of Misrule except read it!

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