Customer Reviews

The Sound of Building Coffins

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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

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.

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.

No city has a more individual culture than New Orleans, Louisiana. "The Sound of Building Coffins" is a magnificent novel from author Louis Maistros, as he crafts a novel that is distinctly New Orleans in origin. The story is of an infant supposedly possessed by the devil, and the community around him doing everything they can to save the child. Written in a fine lyrical style, "The Sound of Building Coffins" is a unique novel.

The Sound of Building Coffins easily ranks as one of my favorite books. Maistros blends magical realism with the harrowing history of New Orleans, displaying a love affair the writer obviously has with the city.

One of the chapters reads like a comforting letter to the residents of post-Katrina New Orleans and yet is still relevent to the story. It shows that the people have dealt with apocryphal hurricanes before and instead of changing the core of New Orleans it brings about a new era for its residents while still maintaining a deeply rooted heritage that has made the city one of the most unique and desirable places to visit in the States. Maistros understands New Orleans and articulately translates the language of its soul. The book distinguishes itself apart from anything else I've read about the Crescent City.

But back to the story: Although the book's subject is very different from 100 Years of Solitude, a fan of the book can easily pick up The Sound of Building Coffins and have a simliar bewitching feeling. Just as in 100 Years of Solitude, right after I finished Maistros' book, I began to read it again from the beginning. The book weaves together the different and complicated and beautiful elements of New Orleans with mysticism. The sentences are succinct, finely crafted, and effective with the same poetic intent of any of Marquez's best work. As far as I know this is Maistros' debut and it's equivelant of a Van Halen or Led Zeppelin debut that leaves the audience with a WTF reaction over and over. I highly, highly recommend this book and it is one that I will buy for friends and family as gifts whether they like it or not. I'm sure they'll be posting on Amazon about how this book touched them in a personal way.

This book is sometimes sad and sometimes happy. The characters here do things that you disapprove of. Sometimes you forgive them and sometimes you don't. But the one thing this book does do is have a profound emotiontial effect on the reader. And that's the way it should be. Anyone who's ever been to New Orleans knows that it's a town that has a profound emotional effect on it's visitors.

What a weird, wonderful, complex, and moving novel. The book opens with young Typhus Morningstar riding his bike while carrying a burlap sack of fetuses he's bringing to the river to be re-birthed. Typhus and others witness and participate in his father's (Noonday Morningstar) attempt at an exorcism, an attempt that affects the lives of everyone, even New Orleans herself. The novel picks up the characters' desperate pieces fifteen years later. Heartbreaking and challenging stuff. COFFINS is heavy (a good heavy) with the history of New Orleans and a riffin' jazz style that I could just hear when I read the book. And the last chapter of the book is just jaw-droppingly perfect. You have to read it, if for nothing else, to experience the last chapter.

this novel is just like new orleans. deep. dark. rich. beautiful. magical. historical. maistros is one to watch. love his use of magical realism and themes of birth and rebirth.

Hard to describe something like this!after reading many historical fiction novels I am amazed at the talent of this author.the story is so over the top with imagination, detail and how he makes this work is amazing. The first page will grab you and never let go!Being from New Orleans and knowing its rich and very unique history made it an even better read for me personaly. this book is fast and full of wild and crazy twists and turns.I still think about it weeks after reading.Just keep them coming!Thanks for awakening my sense of imagination definitly not too long,I didnt want it to end.

An absolutely beautiful book in a spooky, eerie, magical realism way. It's just full of the flavor of New Orleans (or at least, how I think of New Orleans) with Hoodoo women, ghosts, magical catfish, and the birth of Jazz. Most of the characters have a dark side, which they show frequently, but even so, most of the characters are quite likable. Even those not likable are interesting. The story twists and turns around itself, much like the eddies in the swamps and bayous, and ends up in a place quite different from where it started. I quite enjoyed it.