Letourneau's Used Auto Parts [Hardcover]

Carolyn Chute (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1988

In this “assured, complex and memorable tale” (Publishers Weekly), Chute once again makes a tiny corner of the world her own,a kind of Oz turned upside down with a wizard named Big Lucien, head of the Letourneau clan, another ragtag family that inhabits Egypt, Maine, and the nearby Miracle City.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Any doubts that Chute could not follow her remarkable debut novel The Beans of Egypt, Maine with another winner will be vanquished by this assured, complex and memorable tale, told in bold, forceful prose. We are back in Egypt and in the adjacent, ironically named Miracle City, a squalid jumble of unpainted shacks and trailers that is nonetheless a welcome haven to the residents of this poverty-stricken community. The area's most important citizen is the eponymous Big Lucien Letourneau, who runs the auto salvage junkyard at which most of the men work. It's a brutal life, and in bad times Lucien can't afford to pay his men. But if he sometimes lacks money, Big Lucien never lacks compassion. He is a one-man welfare system, sheltering the destitute, homeless and elderly; some of his ex-wives and many of his children, in and out of wedlock; and a churning population of cats. For a long time we see Big Lucien only obliquely and he assumes almost mythic dimensions before we finally meet him, late in the novel, when Chute's bleakly comic message about the enobling power of compassion becomes clear. Meanwhile we become involved with the other, beautifully developed characters., The recipients of Big Lucien's "heart of gold" are desperately poor, ignorant, unwashed and unkempt, sexually promiscuous, violent when drunkyet Chute gives them humanity and dignity. Her compassion for people condemned to deadend lives infuses this powerful novel with universal meaning.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Chute's new novel is a slice-of-life story cut from the middle of the loaf. Loosely structured around the interactions and relationships of Big Lucien Letourneau, owner of the Miracle City junkyard, and his family, neighbors, and assorted hangers-on, the novel seems a series of barely connected sketches. The absence of a coherent point of view further diminish Chute's undeniably vivid language and clear eye for the details of life on the margins of society. Still, the immediacy of the prose evokes in startling clarity the amoral jumble of passions and the suffering of characters whose lives seem at once so different and yet so much like our own. Librarians should consider, given the interest in Chute's first novel, The Beans of Egypt, Maine ( LJ 3/15/87). Linda L. Rome, Mentor, Ohio
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 244 pages
• Publisher: Ticknor & Fields; 2nd edition (June 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0899195008
• ISBN-13: 978-0899195001
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,257,359 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A continuation of the story of Egypt, Maine, December 2, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Letourneau's Used Auto Parts (Harvest American Writing) (Paperback)

Carolyn Chute's manipulation of the English language alone warrants her place at the forefront of America's writers today. In Letourneau's Used Auto Parts, Chute continues to tell the story of the very poor of western Maine. This book, even more than The Beans truly evokes the world of the poor, the desperate, and the struggling; as well as their small but important joys and victories. This book truly opened my eyes to what is important in life.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece of American Literature, July 28, 2008

By 

J. Gunning - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Letourneau's Used Auto Parts (Harvest American Writing) (Paperback)

Mrs. Chute has done something eternal. It's as though she has carved the Pieta with a chain saw; a Pieta far more moving, poignant and beautiful than Michelangelo's. Society is only a precarious charade against chaos. Your fine manners and social skills aside; we are these people and always have been.

1.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't Finish, April 29, 2011

By 

Melissa McCauley (North Little Rock, AR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Letourneau's Used Auto Parts (Harvest American Writing) (Paperback)

I guess you can include me in the list of unwashed heathens who didn't think this book was a work of literary genius. I found the non-exploits of the Letourneaus and the Babbidges to be beyond boring, and I could not force myself to finish.