An extraordinary debut novel featuring one of the most engaging and wonderfully original characters in recent fiction. Lacy Spring is a cheeky Texan with flaming red hair and strong passions. She has a job she likes, a fiance she loves, and a wedding she should be planning. So why is she so smitten with Black Jesus, a local blues singer?.
| ||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Equal parts recovery manual, travelogue and tall tale, Redd's first novel sings a bluesy ballad about Lacy Springs, an attractive young Texas schoolteacher wrestling with her dark and disturbing past. Raised in Dallas by her wealthy, abusive mother, Lacy, who teaches high-school English, lives in Houston with Ellis, her long-suffering fiance. Ellis may be tender and understanding, but that's not enough to stop Lacy from sneaking out for wild assignations with blues musician Black Jesus, her volatile, sensual lover. Even "my PhD in Comparative Literature does not prevent my heart from freezing up, and then thawing when I hear this man's foolish talk," she confesses. The story line traces Lacy's struggles to confront her demons. She's aided in this quest by a cut-rate New Age therapist, Eva, a loopy grad student in a Velcro-fastened turban, but when Lacy can't face Eva's questions, she scribbles lyrics on a legal pad, recasting into comfortably abstracted songs the themes that trouble her. Like the turbulent lives of the blues musicians she admires, Lacy's own existence grows increasingly dramatic as she juggles the promise of a stable domestic routine with Ellis and her exciting, sometimes violent, time on the road with Black Jesus. As the action shifts through the South, from Houston to Graceland, Redd provides evocative descriptions of a world where restaurants serve "salsa so hot it drives the confusion right out of your head." The plot takes some broad, almost farcical, twists that leaven the solemnity of Lacy's revelations but also come close to trivializing them. On the whole, though, this is an engaging and affecting examination of one woman's determined search for self-affirmation.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
In this humorous yet sentimental first novel, Lacey Springs, a highly educated, upper-middle-class schoolteacher, is trying to pull her life together before her wedding in six weeks. As she deals with the frustrations of teaching and her aggravation with planning the wedding, she enjoys infidelity with a local blues singer named Black Jesus. Meanwhile, Lacey writes blues songs to escape her past and seeks counseling through an unlicensed bisexual therapist who obsesses over animal rights while trying to get Lacey to confront her sexual abuse at the hands of a fanatically religious mother and a male baby-sitter during her youth. This is a clever novel on the joys and sorrows of life. The writing is witty, and the characters are lively, realistic, and fun. A quick read; recommended for popular collections.?Shenise Ross, New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A rich, passionate book that you will want to share.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Playing the Bones (Hardcover)
I purchased this book after reading an interview with Louise Redd in the Austin Chronicle. I finished the book within hours. I just couldn't put it down. I immediately called all my girlfriends and my sister and told them to go buy it. They all loved it just as much as I did. The characters are so complex and real. Readers are truly share their heartbreaks, internal conflicts, and moments of rejoicing. An absolutely fabulous book
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loved it.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Playing the Bones (Paperback)
Like a literary spice cake hot from the oven, Louise Redd¹s brilliant first novel, Playing the Bones, is both sweet and pungent, lusciously rich, and comforting at its conclusion. Lacy Springs, a well-educated daughter of snobby Dallas society, teaches eighth-grade English in Houston. She is engaged to be married to kind and stable Ellis, but can¹t abandon her desire for sultry and volatile blues star, Black Jesus. When the Black Jesus passion demons come and get her, she feels the skin of her throat flush, and a knotting and unknotting between her hip bones. ³I feel something like industrial-strength cleaning fluid in my stomach when I think of his hands cradling his harmonica. I feel my naturally red hair perspiring a secret shine.² Lacy is daring, honest, clever, whimsical, amusing, and most of all completely genuine. As I read, I kept wanting to meet her. I wanted to pick up the phone and invite her over for a beer, or better yet, dinner. Confused and pondering her direction in love (should she marry Ellis?), and trying to overcome a childhood trauma (at age seven she was raped by her baby-sitter, plump and ugly Donny), Lacy seeks the advice of a wacko therapist, Eva, a grad student clad in Velcro-turban who is working on her PhD in psychology. The Eva chapters are replete with fascinating observations and non-clichéd, extraordinarily funny psycho babble. It is here in Eva¹s office that Lacy confesses items on her mind-list, those numbers all-spiced and tangy as cinnamon throughout the book: ³Number 17 on my list: I write a hit blues song and Ray Charles sings it at the Grammys . . .² ³Number 22 on my list: I want something to accidentally interfere with my wedding . . .² ³On my list of One Hundred Things I want Out of Life, hearing a certain man say Œhey my baby¹ is Number 2.² She refers, in wish-list Number 2, to Black Jesus. We learn, too, that Lacy is turned on by e.e. cummings, blues, Shakespeare, and men named after gods. Like the chapter titles which Redd no-nonsensely ! and meaningfully assembled, the reader will find Lacy Springs a no-excuse, take-responsibility, overtly honest-to-herself woman. She faces her obstacles and makes no apologies for her mistakes. Redd has crafted the recovery part of the book without all the sugary-sweet syrup one might expect to find in a recovery book, which this novel is only in part. Playing the Bones is a strong-as-steel novel with a strong-as-steel protagonist who admits she can¹t know all the answers. What could be more human?
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Broken Bones: All form, no substance,
By A Customer
This review is from: Playing the Bones (Hardcover)
An obvious "workshop" product, this book has all the proper elements and no soul. The characters are one dimensional, the conflict stays on a superficial level, and the plot tries too hard to be hip. Even worse, the voice is thoroughly inauthentic. Some interesting issues are raised, but the characters can't seem to dig deeply into themselves to find genuine answers. Ultimately, I just didn't care what happened to them. The packaging - great cover and enticing dust jacket notes - are the best thing about this book. I can only assume the author coerced her friends into sending in the rest of the reviews on this page
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
