Breaking Out of Bedlam: A Novel [Hardcover]

Leslie Larson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 2010

Cora Sledge is horrified when her children, who doubt her ability to take care of herself, plot to remove her from her home. So what if her house is a shambles? Who cares when she last changed her clothes? If an eighty-two-year-old widow wants to live on junk food, pills, and cigarettes, hasn’t she earned the right? When her kids force her into The Palisades, an assisted living facility, Cora takes to her bed, planning to die as soon as possible. But life isn’t finished with her yet, not by a long shot.

Deciding that truth is the best revenge, Cora begins to write a tell-all journal that reveals once and for all the secret she has guarded since she was a young woman. In entries that are profane, profound, and gossipy, she chronicles her childhood in rural Missouri, her shotgun wedding, and the terrible event that changed the course of her life. Intermingled with her reminiscences is an account of the day-to-day dramas at The Palisades—her budding romance with a suave new resident, feuds with her tablemates, her rollicking camaraderie with the man who oversees her health care, and the sinister cloud of suspicion that descends as a series of petty crimes sets everyone on edge. The story builds to a powerful climax as Cora’s revelations about her past mesh with the unraveling intrigue in the present.

Cora is by turns outrageous, irreverent, and wickedly funny. Despite a life with more than its share of disappointment and struggle, she refuses to go gently into her twilight years, remaining intensely curious, disinclined to play it safe, and willing to start over. Breaking Out of Bedlam captures the loneliness and secrets that lurk within families, the hardscrabble reality facing women with limited resources, and the resilience of a woman who survives, despite all the odds, through an unlikely combination of passion, humor, and faith.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her delightful second novel (after Slipstream), Larson injects a jolt of liveliness into the bleak setting of an assisted living home, thanks to the obstinate and crass narrator, 82-year-old Cora Sledge. The overweight, pill-popping Cora is placed in the Palisades by her children after they deem her unfit to care for herself. Once there, she begins writing in the journal her granddaughter gave her, her entries eventually revolving around a big secret from her past. Meanwhile, around the Palisades, Cora is often in the midst of—if not at the center of—resident feuds, both the victim and suspect of a spree of robberies and the recipient of a suave new resident's amorous attention. Perhaps not surprisingly, Cora decides to take control of her life, and as she questions the loyalty of those closest to her, she reveals intimate feelings and personal heartaches that have always been obscured by her rough exterior. Cora's machinations—sometimes wily, sometimes curious, always funny—and her lovable crustiness give this plenty of heart and humor. (Jan.)
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Review

“A kick….Reading [Cora’s]’journals,’ as she reawakens, finds a friend and a paramour, and plots her escape, is a hoot.”
—The New York Times

“Tough-edged Cora Sledge, 82, is a reluctant resident of The Palisades nursing home—a ‘prison [where] your only crime is you lived too long.’ Her tell-all journal, recounting dramas at the home (thefts, love affairs, rivalries) and a tragedy buried in her past, is profane, harrowing, comical—and Cora’s voice is spot-on.”
—AARP Magazine

“Breaking out of Bedlam is a fun—and inspiring—read, that proves you’re never too old to really start living.”
—Instinct magazine

“Larson has drawn a winning character in Cora . . . a Confederate Stone Angel, with our Hagar as template. Like Hagar, she is rude, crude, arrogant, and totally without apology—and readers should admire her for it.”
—The Hamilton Spectator (Canada)

“Delightful . . . Larson injects a jolt of liveliness into the bleak setting of an assisted living home, thanks to the obstinate and crass narrator, 82-year-old Cora Sledge. . . . Cora’s machinations—sometimes wily, sometimes curious, always funny—and her lovable crustiness give this plenty of heart and humor.”
—Publishers Weekly
 
“Heartwarming and funny, with nary a slip into sentimentality.”
—Kirkus Reviews
 
“Leslie Larson is a writer of tales that are hilarious and heartbreaking at once—no easy feat, but the mark of great storytelling. She writes with an intimate eye and heart about citizens so familiar to the American landscape, we don’t even see them.”
—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

“Leslie Larson has created an original in Cora Sledge. Overweight with secrets, tough as she is ill, Cora is about to spill the beans on her ill-mannered, kidnapping children in a journal given to her by a grandchild. Instead, what she discovers in this moving and funny novel about assisted living is, to her astonishment, a primer on love.”
—Helena María Viramontes, author of Their Dogs Came with Them
 
“Is death a tragedy or a triumph? Is it a nightmare or a dark comedy? Do we put our accounts in order, or do we exact our revenge? Is there, even, a touch of grace? Somehow, Leslie Larson manages to explore all these possibilities in this powerful novel.”
—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Hummingbird’s Daughter and Into the Beautiful North
 
“In a voice brimming with wit, energy, and originality, and with a keen eye and a pitch-perfect ear for language, Leslie Larson delivers us a protagonist like no other. Through Cora Sledge’s unique perspective, we ache and laugh along with her until the very last page, and she reminds us that longing and acceptance are at the very core of the human condition no matter what our age or circumstance.”
—Alex Espinoza, author of Still Water Saints

"Few women have kept me as worried and curious and awake at night as Cora Sledge, the 'heroine' of Leslie Larson's great new novel. Her life is huge, and tragic, and comic, and stalwart, and her voice is astonishing. How does Larson know these things, especially the things we're all afraid of, that we'll end up helpless, powerless, loveless, after such lives we think we're living? Read this novel to see redemption."
—Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon and A Million Nightingales

“Meet pill-popping, slovenly, sharp-tongued Cora Sledge, all three-hundred pounds and eighty-two years of her. Be prepared for surprises at every turn, from the moment her children shove her out of her home and into Palisades, a cinder-block warehouse for the aged. There, love, skullduggery, and heartbreak await Cora and finally lead her to a well-lighted path. In BREAKING OUT OF BEDLAM, Leslie Larson gives us high hilarity and deep tenderness, allowing neither to rob the other. In Cora Sledge, she gives us a woman who is brave enough to look closely at the sum of all her years and to learn new love from old sorrows.”
—Kate Maloy, author of Every Last Cuckoo

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1 edition (January 12, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307460762
• ISBN-13: 978-0307460769
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.2 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #641,857 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The New York Times called Leslie Larson's second novel, Breaking Out of Bedlam, "A kick." Publishers Weekly said, "Delightful...Plenty of heart and humor." And the San Francisco Chronicle called it "A good read: funny, sad and easy." Leslie's critically acclaimed first novel, Slipstream, was a BookSense Notable Book, a Target Breakout Book, winner of the Astraea Award for Fiction, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her work has appeared in Faultline, the East Bay Express, Writer magazine, and the Women's Review of Books, among other publications. She has taught writing at the Macondo Writers Workshop, San Diego Writers Ink, and Book Passage.

Leslie lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Visit her website: www.LeslieLarson.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Do not read until I'm dead.", January 12, 2010

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Breaking Out of Bedlam: A Novel (Hardcover)

At eighty-two, Cora Sledge's worst nightmare has come true. Obese, drug-addled and cantankerous, Cora's rabid independence is struck a fatal blow when her three adult children descend upon her filthy house, discovering a refrigerator filled with moldering food and hidden caches of pills, Cora's lifestyle grown more troubling with each passing year. Cowed by her children's outrage and disgust, Cora is soon ensconced in The Palisades, an assisted living facility that is little more than a concrete bunker for housing the elderly. Institutionalization at its most frightening, Cora's place at The Palisades consists of a small room and bath, the sliding glass door on one wall offering a view of the loading docks and a steady stream of low-paid workers pushing laundry carts back and forth.

But as we learn from the pages of Cora's diary, this is a woman with an indomitable spirit, married at seventeen and hiding a painful secret all the long years of her life. After a few weeks in bed, drugged to insensitivity by the pills she has managed to sneak into the facility, Cora resists the siren call of oblivion as she explores the limitations and conditions at her new home, where "the walkers and wheelchairs make a slow-motion stampede for the dining room" and the halls smell of incontinence and despair. There are few friends here- certainly not her table mate, "Poison Ivy"- but a respiratory therapist offers enough kindness to spark Cora's flagging spirit. Decreasing her drug intake, Cora is inspired to shed the weight as she unburdens her soul of a lifetime of sorrows.

It is difficult to describe this novel: frightening, because what happens to Cora in her old age could happen to any of us; joyful, because her indomitable spirit suggests that regardless of the body's deficiencies, the soul refuses to be extinguished; sad, because Cora is a foolish woman who still believes in love and romance; and uplifting, because the author has distilled the essence of her character into someone the reader can identify with. We learn Cora's deepest secret in the quirky language of a farm girl who moved to Detroit at the height of the Depression and later to sunny California, the blunt remarks of a woman who always speaks her mind and the fears that riddle the old and infirm. Cora is a survivor, spunky, sly and stubborn, up to one more round with the children she raised, determined to finish out her days on her terms before she greets the Grim Reaper. Luan Gaines/2010.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You NEED to know what becomes of stubborn everywoman Cora!, February 6, 2010

By 

Margarett "picky" (New York) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Breaking Out of Bedlam: A Novel (Hardcover)

From the first page you will be drawn into Cora's life - told from within with searing humor and terror. 82 year old Cora is each of us - and who we could and may be. When she is placed in a 'home' for her own good by her kids - each of whom we also could and may be - her world is turned inside out. In her new home her only friends are a small journal where she begins recording her present fury and secret past - and one of the nurses who dislodges phlegm and dispenses tenderness in equal quantities. You will be giggling and appalled at Cora's stubborn blindness to what is happening around her and her stubborn brilliance as her past and present converge in the very last pages. This is a must read and must share.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Original, quirky, surprising, March 17, 2010

By 

Jenna Sue (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Breaking Out of Bedlam: A Novel (Hardcover)

Breaking Out of Bedlam tells the story of Cora Sledge, an obese, pill-popping, crusty 82-year-old woman whose children have just had her put in The Palisades, an assisted living facility where the tenants range from seniors who still take fitness classes to, as Cora puts it, "the droolers." This book could have been so depressing, but it was anything but. It could also have been silly and disrespectful to the elderly...also neither of those things. Instead, it was an engaging look at how - no matter what our age or circumstances - people still crave to have love, excitement and a life worth living.

The book is written as a journal that Cora is writing, and in it she both talks about the day to day happenings at The Palisades and also about her life growing up. There are secrets in both. I found myself unable to put the book down wondering what was going to happen next. I loved several characters, especially a male nurse she befriends. A scene where Cora - who because of her age and weight can't walk very far - decides to go to the other side of the facility to find a man she's romantically interested in was unforgettable in the way the author made a trek across a building seem like a trip across the desert.

I'm kind of surprised this book isn't getting all the buzz some others are... I hope it catches on because I'd like to see more from this author. I will be recommending it to my book club.