Customer Reviews

Lightning Song

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This was the first Lewis Nordan novel I read, and it was the perfect way to start. This book is funny--very, very funny.

If you are a fan of magic realism--Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez--you have to give this novel a try; it is magic realism with a southern twist. Lightning continues to strike the house, becoming a living, breathing character in the novel. Magazines glow. A girl with fins twirls a baton with amazing talent.

About half way through this book, you will be back online looking for other Lewis Nordan novels, so you won't have to wait a second between books.

Excellent reading. Touches the southern thing well, creates a great story line, and well worth the read. I hope to read other books by Nordan.

The plot of this book is a minimalist coming-of-age story. The novel's great strength lies in the strength of the writing: Nordan can make a trip to the store sound Homeric. The individual episodes vary in quality, but at Nordan's finest he writes as movingly as anyone alive.

A very readable, moving account of an emotional period of a 12-year old boy's existence. While the lone fault of this novel may be that many questions seem left unanswered, that could be intentional...as if Nordan is saying there aren't any easy answers in life, especially when you're twelve and have just made the discovery that you're parents are no longer in love. Alternating between funny, painful and heartwarming, at certain moments Lightning Song manages to touch on all the emotions at once. Enjoyable and rewarding, this book will have me reading the author's other works in short order.

I picked up this little innocent looking tome at our local library sale for a quarter and I have to say that it was my best deal this year. The book is overflowing with laughter, tears, joy, heartbreak and fun. It sat around for months, ignored. I finally picked it up a few days ago and I'm so glad I did. I laughed so hard, so often, that my husband thought I'd finally gone over to the dark side permanently... (if you know what I mean).

This story (which is 110% Southern) is told by 12 year old Leroy Dearman who lives in Mississippi on a llama farm and is caught in the cruel throes of puberty. I had no idea that llamas sang. They may or may not, but if Leroy said it, I believe it.

The laughter begins when Leroy's Uncle Harris moves in lock, stock, Playboys and all into the attic, having left his wife, Hannah, on the Gulf Coast. Let me pause here to say that Uncle Harris's unholy, funny, knee-slapping, rolling around on the floor HILARIOUS story about the blue-runner snake amost killed me. I thought I would die laughing and I don't laugh at just any old thing. But it only got better once I regained my dignity and wiped the snot and tears off my face and kept reading. (I've read countless thousands of books in my lifetime and when I say something is this funny, you should be hitting the "Order Now" button if you're in need of a soul-cleansing laugh....)

When the New People move in next door (across the pasture, that is) and Leroy happens over when they're on the way to grief therapy and decides to go along for the ride, so to speak, well, I lost it again. I had to put the book away for an hour or so to catch my breath, blow my nose, wipe the tears-from-laughing-so-hard off my face and recoup my twice-lost dignity. Dear Lord, I thought, I've known people like these characters and I thought nobody else on earth was this crazy/sad/funny....And, how did I live this long and not read any books by Lewis Nordan?

To wrap this up, I went and ordered every book I could find by Lewis Nordan. And I'm on as tight a budget as the rest of you, but you can't put a price sticker on laughter. I sure wish I'd found Mr. Nordan sooner---but better late than never. Now get over there and hit that 'Add to Shopping Cart' button for 273 pages of fabulous, larger than life, awesome fiction.

I enjoyed this book. It had a lot of interesting characters and I never knew where the story was headed next.

Lightning Song has one of the world's funniest seduction scenes. Nordan's prose is funny, brisk and authentic, but I felt a little "had" by what seemed the staged eccentricities of the characters and the situations, which bordered on the formulaic Southern Gothic. Still, I got caught up in the story toward the end and did finally buy into it. I just wish I felt like Nordan was writing from deep within his heart. But he is so good, it's worth the read.

Nordan's characters are wonderfully flawed and intelligently drawn. In LIGHTNING SONG he presents the reader with the perfect metaphor for the odd and beautiful. I have known such llamas my entire life and appreciate seeing this careful and fair presentation.

You've got to be kidding! I taught literature for 35 years, and I'm an avid reader. This has to be the worst book I've read in a very long time.
It is inane, pointless, impossible, and so completely out of touch with any sort of reality that I have to wonder why he would bother to put this together. I mean, really, what is the point? Stringing together a collection of disjointed absurdities does not make for quality.

This novel starts and ends well, but it's tedious in the middle. Somewhat plotless and episodic; the characters are eccentric enough, though, to make it interesting.