Customer Reviews

Meely LaBauve

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Huck Finn with a Cajun patois. Fifteen year old Emile "Meely" Labauve is part ruffian, part home spun philosopher, and completely charming. He is a wise, uneducated man-child, fighting the basic battle--how to survive in a hostile world. This good short read (290 pages) takes you into Meely's world, where a man (even a fifteen year old man) is judged by his ability to survive by his wits, his honor, and his courage. Like any good novel it takes you to a place you may have never been, in this case, the swamps of Louisiana in the early 1960s. Ken Wells' debut novel is extremely entertaining. Mr. Wells' characters are vivid, memorable and authentic. His tale is both simple and complex. In this coming-of-age tale, Meely comes face-to-face with prejudice, loneliness, and sex (for the first time); not to mention alligators, snakes and bad cops. Althought it is a tale of children, it delivers an adult lesson. Meely's saga contains lots of action (swamp car chases, wild animals, shootouts) but its real power comes from Meely's conflict with prejudice: white vs. black; rich vs. poor; young vs. old. In Meely's world, his friend Joey, the educated son of a rich landowner, saves the day by defying his class prejudiced father by doing what is right instead of what is safe. Make no mistake, this is an entertaining tale, not a philosophy book. But like Mark Twain's Huck, Meely Labauve, if you are not watching, can sneak up on you and teach you something about life.

As hard-bitten as I am, it's rare that a book sticks with me, much less makes me cry or affect my waking hours for so long after reading it. That's exactly the effect Meely LaBauve has on readers, it's a book that has "Hollywood Movie" stamped all over it. This debut novel is a vivid tour-de-force set in the backwoods of the Louisiana Bayou, a coming-of-age book that is so shot through with rich, textured landscapes and honey-combed with vivid dialogue that it ranks right up there with Call of the Wild and The Outsiders. I was sad to finish it, and wanted more. To cut to the chase, Meely LaBauve is a story about a lonely, little boy who has to survive on his own by fishing, who wears his sense of realism and dignity like a badge of honor, who lost his mother and has to routinely battle local toughs. His favorite recreation is fishing alligators with his derelict but lovable pa, an adult whose every element in him has a blood feud with his opposite tormentor, crooked, and emotionally constipated, cops. If you want to find out what it's like to eat Cajun sauce piquante, how to use fire ants in fights with bullies, or whether hogs eat people (they can), then read this book. After a long dry absence on the best fiction lists, Meely LaBauve is a welcome relief.

After leaving Louisiana 35 years ago, Meely La Bauve took me back, shedding the years in betwen. I have never enjoyed an ethnic book as much as I did Meely. So many words and phrases that I hadn't heard for years came rushing back to me with lovely nostalgia. The descriptions of Meely's surroundings and his thoughts and actions were so vivid that I was in another world which I didn't want to leave. I look forward to more wonderful books, Mr. Wells!

This novel was set in the area where I grew up, and I must say, Ken is successful in conveying a real sense of place, to the point of being archetypal.

What I read began touching a deeper chord in me than just reading a humorous story. Country, swamp, wild life, sugar cane, palmetto and St. Augustine grass. Everything from crawfish clamping on your fingers, to hunting and fishing in order to eat, to Cajun schoolyard bullies, to fledgling encounters between the sexes in the cane fields, to corrupt cops, to class and race distinctions, to honor between folks who had little, regardless of race.

This book is fiction only in one sense of the word. I've met some of the people in this book. What takes place in this story really happened, and still happens, somewhere, to someone. There are none of the overblown plot turns of a James Lee Burke story. These are real people in real life situations, just removed from the common experience of most of us. Hell, I bet the flying gator was drawn from real life too.

My only regret is that the book ended.

You are truly in for a treat when you read this book. The author's feeling for time, place, and dialogue are outstanding. Other reviewers have compared Meely to Huckleberry Finn, and they are correct, but I was reminded of Faulkner in places, particularly in the author's treatment of Meely's relationship with family. In addition, some of the comedic scenes reminded me of sections of Falulkner's book the Rievers. There are undercurrents in the novel of serious social issues, too, and Wells does a very effective job in bringing these forward without preaching, especially in the parts of the story about Meely, his daddy (I have known folks like him), and Meely's friend, Chilly. I hated to see the book come to an end, but the author has the gift - often lacking in contemporary fiction - of knowing when to stop. In conclusion, buy this book, read it, and share it with friends - it's that good.

There aren't too many of these around: a Cajun coming of age novel. In fact, I'll bet this is the only one, and it's a winner. Just made for reading aloud (especially to a young teenage son), the story is told in first person by a 13yo kid who lives in a falling-down (literally) shack back in a Louisiana bayou with his usually absent gator-hunting, kindly, nearly-always-drunk, renegade father who never recovered from his wife's death 8 yrs earlier during childbirth. The sexual initiation scene with Cassie in the middle of a field is unrivaled. Somebody needs to make a movie of this book!

I spent some time in South Louisiana where this book is set but I'm not sure that matters. Meely's one of the best books I've read in a long, long time set anywhere. Meely himself is a great character--a kid full of heart and honor, but a bit of a rascal too. His daddy is an alligator hunter, part Native American, who never quite got over the death of his wife years before. Meely's being left to pretty much raise himself on the "lonesome end of Catahoula Bayou." He shoots his food, including a mocking bird when he's hungry enough. He runs afoul of the bayou bully, a hulking, mean-spirited farm boy who doesn't like Meely because he's a fearless runt and doesn't like Meely's pa because Junior is a bigot who holds the LaBauves' "Wild Injun" blood against them. When Junior and his pot-bellied, racist uncle, a local cop, get after Meely, it forces Meely's dad to re-enter his son's life in a major way. I know a lot of people will compare Meely to Huck Finn but Wells writes nothing like Mark Twain. His, in fact, is a clear, simple, accessible prose and Meely's voice, though he speaks in dialect, is singular and pure. And there's a lot packed in this little book--insight into race and class, not to mention an amazing chase scene and one of the best, and most hilarious, sex scenes I've ever read. This is not a child's book, but I think teenagers would really enjoy it as much as I have.

It's hard not to fall in love with Meely LaBauvre, both the novel and the young man. Smarter than he lets on, tougher than he has any right to be, he is an American archetype, full of wit and wisdom at a young age. His voice is as appealing as any I've read in fiction in a long time, and comparing him to Huck Finn is not ridiculous - that's how good a character he is. His voice is so beguiling he carries you through and you wish his adventures never had to end. The sense of place is magnificent, too, with swamp, backwoods, and bayous, and one of the funniest and yet most touching sex scenes in a corn field you'll ever read. Ken Wells is a wonderful new voice, and this is a very good first novel.

Huck Finn with a Cajun patois. Fifteen year old Emile "Meely" Labauve is part ruffian, part home spun philosopher, and completely charming. He is a wise, uneducated man-child, fighting the basic battle--how to survive in a hostile world. This good short read (250 pages) takes you into Meely's world, where a man (even a fifteen year old man) is judged by his ability to survive by his wits, his honor, and his courage. Like any good novel it takes you to a place you may have never been, in this case, the swamps of Louisiana in the early 1960s. Ken Wells' debut novel is extremely entertaining. Mr. Wells' characters are vivid, memorable and authentic. His tale is both simple and complex. In this coming-of-age tale, Meely comes face-to-face with prejudice, loneliness, and sex (for the first time); not to mention alligators, snakes and bad cops. Althought it is a tale of children, it delivers an adult lesson. Meely's saga contains lots of action (swamp car chases, wild animals, shootouts) but its real power comes from Meely's conflict with prejudice: white vs. black; rich vs. poor; young vs. old. In Meely's world, his friend Joey, the educated son of a rich landowner, saves the day by defying his class prejudiced father by doing what is right instead of what is safe. Make no mistake, this is an entertaining tale, not a philosophy book. But like Mark Twain's Huck, Meely Labauve, if you are not watching, can sneak up on you and teach you something about life.

I thought sure that a book about Cajuns, of which I am one, by a WALL STREET JOURNAL writer had to be just another misunderstood blasphemy about my people -- but it is not. Ken Wells understands the difference between Cajuns and the rest of the Deep South. He is a worthy racounteur and MEELY LABAUVE is a great book.