Amazon.com Review
Ellen Gilchrist, who bottomed out with the ghastly 1997 novel
Sarah Conley, returns to form with a collection celebrating the South, extended families, and romantic love. Die-hard fans who've hunkered down with tattered copies of the author's early-'80s treasures such as
Victory over Japan and
In the Land of Dreamy Dreams can come up and breath the fresh air and easy humor of
The Cabal. In the opening novella, a group of influential Jackson, Mississippi, men and women all go to the same psychiatrist. "This is the story," Gilchrist begins, "of a group of people who had a bizarre and unexpected thing happen to them. Their psychiatrist went crazy and started injecting himself with drugs." It's worse than drugs, though: Jim Jaspers has become infected with the truth, and has begun spouting the secrets of his wealthy power-broker clients. This would be bad enough, but the special prosecutor has been haunting the town, looking for dirt on Clinton. Needless to say, as Gilchrist lays bare the anxieties of the town elders, she creates a hothouse of gossip that's as dishy as E.F. Benson's Lucia novels. In the resulting paranoia and ass-covering, Gilchrist has found a new métier: the comedy of middle age. She has always had an undercurrent of waspishness; here she brandishes it and it makes a fine foil to her sweet and lazy love of love.
One of Gilchrist's finer comic creations has been Traceleen, maid to the imperious alcoholic-turned-yoga-enthusiast Miss Crystal. This incomparable duo returns here in "The Big Cleanup," which accompanies the novella along with a few tales of California exile, lost love, and chatty funerals. Gilchrist maintains her wholly unique, almost flat-footed voice, one full of wonder and utterly lacking in concern about sounding brainy. A couple of cousins are "a marvelous-looking pair of mourners, travelers, young women of the contemporary world." And, sometimes, she gets her characterizations dead-on in just a single throwaway sentence: "Lauren Gail was a true Yankee, raised in New England and educated in experimental schools." Gilchrist is once again writing as if she enjoys it, and it's an irresistible spectacle. --Claire Dederer
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Veteran fiction writer Gilchrist (Flights of Angels) is in fine form in another group of short stories that display her distinctive voice and eccentric characters. Featuring the title novella, about a social clique that "runs the town" of Jackson, Miss., this wry and breezy collection touches on all things Southern, from makeovers for aging belles to plantation hijinks, and reverence for ancestors and the Delta itself. When Caroline Jones, a down-on-her-luck poet, accepts a post in the English department of Millsaps College, she also is unwittingly stepping into a social morass. On her first day in town, her old friend Augustus Hailey, the most glamorous gay man in the South, drags her to the funeral of local benefactor Jean Andry Lyles. Then Jim Jaspers, psychiatrist to most of Jackson's elite, suddenly goes mad and reveals publicly the secrets and deceptions of his patients. Some characters in this novella reappear in the five short stories that follow. "The Sanguine Blood of Men" tells of Jones's earlier adventures in San Francisco, where she tries to sell a script to a lecherous old movie mogul. In "Hearts of Dixie," Jean Lyles's typist discovers that her recently deceased employer has left 36 tempting gold Krugerrands in an office safety deposit box. There's a humorous tale about Darwinian theory and people who don't know they're funny, and a happy one about an extended family's get-together. And because no Gilchrist collection would be complete without appearances from Miss Crystal and Traceleen, the author offers a bittersweet reprise of their affectionate relationship. Throughout, there's enjoyment of casual sex, and casual talk about it--and if the talk does often threaten to bury the substance in Gilchrist's fictions, there's giddy pleasure in her characters' endearing antics. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
