The Sound of Building Coffins (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This ambitious, vivid novel by writer, New Orleans resident and jazz record shop owner Maistros starts out in the Big Easy of 1891. Noonday Morningstar, an African-American Baptist preacher, is summoned to pray over a dying one-year-old boy whose supposed illness is actually demonic possession. Aided by Dr. Jack, an abortionist and witch doctor; Beauregard Church, a veteran prison guard; and Buddy Bolden, a cornet player specializing in the new jazz sound, Noonday performs a voodoo exorcism. Fifteen years later, Noonday is dead, and his youngest son, the diminutive and gifted Typhus, has developed an odd love for Lily, a girl he knows only through a photograph. Following Typhus and those connected to the exorcism through New Orleans vibrant underbelly, Maistros develops a rich, dangerous world of musicians, mob justice and magic. Stylistic flourishes, lush descriptions (especially of the voodoo practices), and dialect-heavy narration sometimes jar the storys flow, but the plots insistent pace builds to a satisfying though familiar storm-buffeted climax. (Feb.)
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Review

Louis Maistros has written a lyrical, complex, and brave novel that takes enormous risks and pulls them all off. He is a writer to watch and keep reading, a writer to cherish. --Peter Straub

One has to write with considerable authenticity to pull off a story steeped in magic and swamp water that examines race and class, death and rebirth, Haitian voodoo, and the beginnings of jazz in 1891 New Orleans. Maistros's gritty debut novel follows the interconnected lives of the Morningstar siblings--all lovingly named by their father after disease-- as they wrestle with a powerful demon, con outsiders, kill and die, die and are reborn. The plot is complex and magical, grounded in the history of the city, without being overly sentimental. There is a comfort with death as a part of life in this work that reveals deep feeling for the city and its past. Of course, every novel about New Orleans must have a good hurricane. Like the one in Zora Neale Hurston's classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, this hurricane destroys the city while making hope possible. Highly recommended for all fiction collections, especially where there is an interest in jazz. --Library Journal

The Society of North American Magic Realists welcomes its newest, most dazzling member, Louis Maistros. His debut novel is a thing of wonder, unlike anything in our literature. It startles. It stuns. It stupefies. No novel since Confederacy of Dunces has done such justice to New Orleans. If Franz Kafka had been able to write like Peter Straub, this might have been the result. --Donald Harrington, Winner of the Robert Penn Warren Award and the Oxford-American Lifetime Achievement Award

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: The Toby Press (March 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592642551
• ISBN-13: 978-1592642557
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #290,884 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars (4.5 stars) "In this city there is a long and curious relationship with death.", February 26, 2009

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

From the beginning of this unusual novel set in 1891 New Orleans, when a demon is cast out from a one-year-old child, to the massive destruction of a hurricane in 1906, Maistros leads his characters through a merry chase between the real and the unknown in the murky world of the dead. From the moment a number of Sicilian prisoners are lynched by an angry mob and a prison guard takes home a grisly souvenir, to the exorcism of evil from the baby son of one of the Sicilians, it is clear that this novel will not be bound by ordinary constraints, that the world of the spirit will be just as critical to this tale as what can be viewed by the naked eye. From an ancient voudou mambo to Coco Robicheaux, who steals the souls of naughty children, the novel is filled with extraordinary people, equally righteous, well-meaning and fatally flawed. On the night of the exorcism, seven enter the house where the baby moves with otherworldly energy; not all will live through the experience.

Poverty is familiar to Noonday Morningstar, a Baptist minister and his family- Typhus, Cholera, Diphtheria, Malaria and Dropsy- and there is something to be said for the power of naming. The unseen world is barely removed from such an existence: Typhus rebirths lost babies: his father hears God's clear commands; Diphtheria and Malaria tend to the physical needs of men in sporting houses, flirting with death. But what begins that night echoes through the years, as the characters struggle with their lives and choices, a ragged, malevolent spirit raising havoc once called from the infant. As a young man, Buddy Bolden, the great jazz innovator, plays his horn beside the baby's crib. Buddy's tortured career will be touched by genius and depravity, by secrets and grace. And Dr. Jack, another witness, instigates his own rendezvous with fate as surely as he delivers young women of their unwanted babies with his potions.

In an intricate dance of death and destiny, Maistros' brilliantly constructed characters gradually expose their troubled souls, anxious hearts and weighty emotional burdens. Locked in low-lying fog and superstition, in this New Orleans spirits frolic among the living and tortured souls are released at last to the peace of the next world. Masterfully maneuvering his hapless cast, Maistros performs an amazing feat of spiritual and literary legerdemain. Luan Gaines/ 2009.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Macabre Masterpiece of Magical Realism, March 21, 2009

By	Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Louis Maistros has written a whale of a tale with "The Sound of Building Coffins." Amazingly, it is his debut novel. This is a macabre masterpiece of magical realism, filled with the author's obvious love for New Orleans, where he makes his home in the 8th Ward neighborhood. His deep feelings for the Mighty Mississippi, whose mouth is just a bit downstream of the Mardi Gras City, are also evident.

The novel opens in 1891, a period near the end of the Creole-age with its wonderful music, a combination of elements of West African work songs, slave spirituals, minstrel shows, and rural blues expression with European brass band instruments. A recurrent theme throughout this novel is death and rebirth. Now, in its death throes, this music gives birth to her natural heir - jazz and Ragtime. Music plays such an important role here - from the seductive sound of Buddy Bolden's cornet, (blasting out with the new jazz sound), to the strains of lapping river water, to the buzz of the locals, whispering their deepest secrets, to the roaring wind and waves of an enormous hurricane.

The exotic and colorful cast of characters is large and lavish. Nine year-old Typhus Morningstar is the first person we meet. We find the young boy fulfilling his calling, tenderly rebirthing aborted fetuses in the waters of the Mississippi River under the light of the half-moon. He is almost always watched over by Mr. Marcus Nobody Special, who fishes nightly, looking for a particularly special catfish which he has yet to catch. All other fish are thrown back into the water, allowed to live and swim on.

Typhus' father is an African American Baptist minister, Rev. Noonday Morningstar, who named his children for diseases: Malaria, Cholera, Diphtheria, Dropsy and Typhus. Morningstar, a widower for many years, doesn't care if folks mock his choice in names. "Morningstar saw life as a trial and death as a reward, a bridge to paradise - and he saw God's mysterious afflictions of the body as holy paths to that salvation." The Reverend, his children and Mr. Marcus all play an important role in the storyline.

While Typhus performs his work by the river, across town a baby, born of Sicilian immigrants, is possessed by a terrible demon. The babe's father has just been lynched by a crowd of vigilantes. Doctors, priests and other well meaning do-gooders flee the humble home when faced with the demonic child. However, Rev. Morningstar is not one to be daunted. He and seven cohorts go to dispel the demon. Some of them never leave the house alive. However, dead or alive, these people will forever be effected by what happens that night.

One of the characters who also plays a major role in "The Sound of Building Coffins," is Dropsy Morningstar. This innocent child-man's wide brown eyes continually examine the "journeys of ordinary threads through ordinary fabric, (be it shirt, rug or sock), for long minutes." It is as if he is searching "for hints of code, probing imagined or hidden meanings" within the warp and weft of woven cloth - "as if the fabric of an old shirt might also contain answers to the fabric of the universe itself." Dropsy's penchant for rug pondering is so symbolic of this tale. All the story's many threads, plots and personages, ultimately come together to form one glorious tapestry.

Maistros has written a lyrical, complex work of historical and magical fiction. I must admit, at first I put the novel down after reading two chapters. I was probably craving a lighter read, perhaps a police procedural. However, the next day I returned to "The Sound of Building Coffins" because I just couldn't get the characters and the beginning of the storyline out of my thoughts. I am so glad I gave the book another chance and did not relegate it to my TBR pile. This is a 5 star novel, sheer poetry at times, and a real keeper.
Jana Perskie
A Confederacy of Dunces (Penguin Modern Classics)
Chasing the Devil's Tail: A Mystery of Storyville, New Orleans

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Speechless, Stunned and Waiting For His Next Book, February 3, 2009

By	Kirsten A. Parent "Kirsten Parent" (Stepford) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book rocked my brain, broke my heart and captured the dark and often ugly "beauty" of New Orleans like no other book I've ever read. Having lived in the city for some years I am always skeptical when anyone tries to capture the essence of New Orleans and put it down on paper. Louis Maistros exceeded all expectations and left me stunned. He nailed it. The Sound of Building Coffins captured the threads of shining beauty, blinding pain, hope, loss of faith, love, regret, and unfailing redemption and managed to weave them all intricately into an amazing story that twisted and turned kept me up at night. I could not put this book down. I could not wait to finish it and yet when I turned the last page I felt a sinking sense of sadness - I wanted to read more. Maistros and his brilliant Sound of Building Coffins brought me home and at the same time reminded me why I left... and my relationship with catfish will never be the same.