Malaise : A Novel [Hardcover]

Nancy Lemann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 11, 2002

"A search for love, home, and meaning set between the blazing southern California border town of Esperanza and the old-world haunts of New York," Malaise "is a romantic comedy of manners from a novelist of incomparable style and wit."

Fleming Ford is an Alabama girl exiled to the West Coast, where she is torn between devotion to her husband and a dangerous love for an older Englishman who seems to embody the formality and culture lacking in her new home. California is to Fleming a desert of many kinds, but ultimately she is reluctantly drawn into the culture that she satirizes -- its beautiful vistas, its citizens' endless quest for wellness, the narcotic effect of its perpetual sun. She soon finds herself at the mall or with a botanist, facialist, yoga instructor, or visceral manipulator. She must come to terms with the inhabitants' ceaseless plea to relax, their phobia of weather, their love of malls.

Newly pregnant with her third child while her geologist husband is away searching for water in the barren deserts of the American West, Fleming seeks relief in the companionship of Mr. Lieberman, a British mogul sojourning in Los Angeles. To her, he represents the tragic yet glamorous Old World, the milestones of the twentieth century, and the battlefields of Europe.

Will Fleming risk her marriage and her honor for the love of an aging tycoon? Acclaimed for her Walker Percy-like portraits of Southern society, Nancy Lemann here trains her eye on the contrasts between the East Coast and the West, the Old World and the New, in a captivating story that reflects on universal themes of place, history, and home.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

People either get Nancy Lemann or they don't. Those who do practically worship her for her deeply elegant, eccentric, hilarious novels about displaced Southerners. Those who don't tend to complain that she's too repetitive. That she is, and a good thing, too. In her lovely and odd novel, Malaise, Lemann uses repetition as she does in all her books: as a wellspring for both humor and meaning. Her characters turn phrases over and over in their minds, as if trying to solve them. In Malaise, those phrases concern California, the death of the British Empire, old age, and graciousness. Fleming Ford is a New York journalist, born in Mississippi, whose husband's work takes the family to Esperanza, a San Diegoesque resort city not far from the Mexican border. As always, Lemann's writing wildly conflates the personal and the geographical. Fleming shuns Esperanza as the ends of the earth. At the same time, and not just coincidentally, she falls in love with Mr. Lieberman, an old Englishman who represents the decorousness that she has left behind. Along the way, we get some astonishing writing, like this aside about a visit to Death Valley: "It's so godforsaken, so historical, and so pure that you are curiously elated. It may be called Death Valley, but the minute you get there you are subsumed by a vast and incongruous gaiety." Addled by nostalgia and despair, Lemann's characters are forever bumping into a vast and incongruous gaiety, and telling us about it over and over and over. We wouldn't have it any other way. --Claire Dederer

From Publishers Weekly

"There is nothing I love like decrepitude in a man." With that cheeky declaration, Lemann (The Fiery Pantheon) sums up the one-note plot of her latest novel, which tracks a fortyish woman's urge to have an affair with a geriatric business and entertainment tycoon. Fleming Ford is the sometimes outrageous narrator, a former belle from Alabama who finds herself pregnant and stranded in Southern California as her husband, the endearingly oafish Mac MacMoreland, works on a project to discover underground water that can be piped to Mexico for an enormous profit. Fleming has little interest in her husband's efforts and she seems mildly terrorized by the prospect of caring for her two toddler daughters, so she turns her attention to Mr. Lieberman, the reserved widower who once signed her paychecks when she worked for his New York newspaper. A chance encounter in New York fuels the attraction, and Fleming is startled when Lieberman follows up on the West Coast, proposing that Fleming make the journey from the rather depressing tourist town of Esperanza, where she lives, to visit him for lunch in Los Angeles. Their common Southern heritage generates a quaint attraction despite the age difference, but Lemann has precious little plot to offer beyond the affair, and while some of her cynical observations on SoCal culture are entertaining, many seem tired and familiar. Fleming is a wry, engaging protagonist, but she's not quite enough to make this novel a winner.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1St Edition edition (June 11, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743215486
• ISBN-13: 978-0743215480
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,801,012 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an American treasure, July 17, 2002

By 

in love with Lemann (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Malaise : A Novel (Hardcover)

Nancy Lemann is about the most original and hilarious writer I've ever read. Her observations on people, places, and things are so nutty and funny, I find myself reading them again and again. On top of that, every sentence is full of melancholy and longing. They're actually intoxicating. Am I going overboard? I just love this writer and was so happy to have a new novel from her, I took a day off work to read it. (OK, so I hate my job, too.) Malaise is as wacky and wise as all her other books, and in its own oddball way, it's a great novel. Very mature and a little bit risky. There's no pulse pounding plot, it's true, but when I open one of Lemann's books and hear her voice, I can't put it down. I swear, this is one of those writers people are going to "rediscover" in fifty years (Dawn Powell anyone?) so hang on to your first editions.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful, December 24, 2002

By 

Elizabeth Hendry (New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Malaise : A Novel (Hardcover)

Nancy Lemann's Malaise is a wonderful novel--witty, clever and delightfully snide at times. Lemann has a marvelous, unique approach to storytelling which may turn off some readers, but I really enjoyed it. Reading this novel is like spending time with an old friend with a rapier sharp sarcastic wit. In terms of plotting here, not much happens, but for a novel of about 250 pages, that is OK. Fleming Ford, the narrator, is a 40-year old Southerner living in Esperanza California who becomes a bit obsessed with an older widower she knows from New York. Her out-of-place-ness enables her to observe all around her with a deadpan aloofness that is always funny and at times hilarious. This is a terrific novel and one I highly recommend if you a looking for a brief little sarcastic interlude.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What's your malaise level?, January 19, 2008

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Malaise : A Novel (Hardcover)

California is a love-it-or-hate-it place -- some people would rather live anywhere else, and some people feel that it's practically paradisical. (I fall into the second category, thanks to some months in San Diego)

San Diego also happens to be where Nancy Lemann lives, so she seems ideally suited for the story of a Southern woman lost in SoCal. While this is her most "normal" novel, "Malaise" is still a quirky, offbeat story, where people meander aimlessly through pivotal points in their lives.

Fleming Ford lives with her two kids (and one on the way) in Esperanza, while her geologist hubby tries to "make the desert bloom." She also feels weirdly disconnected from the ways of SoCal, since her heart is still stuck in the East Coast's South. But when she takes a vacation back in NYC, she encounters her former boss Mr. Lieberman, whom she obviously has a crush on.

When Fleming returns to Esperanza, she observes the locals' obsessions on rainfall and various trend-healers. She tries those particular things out, but is more wrapped up in memories of the Deep South and the quirky neighbors -- until Mr. Lieberman shows up, and asks to lunch with her in L.A. Is this is a sign of attraction between them, or a farewell?

This is perhaps Lemann's most "normal" novel -- the main character is meditative rather than eccentric, and it seems a dreamy study of SoCal and the "suave yet dilapidated" New York, rather than a study of eccentricity. Plus, there are relatively few mentions of nervous breakdowns or irrational behavior. Consider it a sunnier, more relaxed version of Lemann's past books.

But it does retain the quirky characters and eccentricity, like the guy who is obsessed with geraniums. The only problem is perhaps the appearance of too many SoCal stereotypes, like the visceral manipulator. But that's more than made up for by Lemann's understatedly evocative prose, whether describing a lovably decayed city or the deserts ("a lunar-seeming landscape, yet infused infinitely with sun").

There's not much of a plot, but somehow it never quite needs one -- Fleming's story focuses on center around a sort of female midlife crisis. Fleming also seems quite real -- a bit befuddled by her life, adoring her husband and Mr. Lieberman in different ways. But she never loses her head or forgets herself, which makes her rather unusual as a character.

"Malaise" is a bittersweet novel, all about a "last love," and a woman reexamining her life in a sunny paradise. Quite different from Lemann's other books, but still endearingly odd. What's your malaise level?