Call and Response - Softcover

Pearson, T. R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 038071163X ISBN 13: 9780380711635

Publisher: Avon Books, 1991

Synopsis

Meandering from comic set pieces to hilarious digressions, Call and Response perfectly captures the peculiar lilts and rhythms of the South -- and spins a magical tale of love and all its manifold complications. The novel centers on Nestor Tudor, a middle-aged widower who is overfond of Ancient Age and Old Gold filters. TR Pearson interweaves the story of Nestor's late-blooming, and ultimately unrequited, affection for Mary Alice Celestine Lefler with parallel stories of true love and broken hearts, young love and cheating hearts, and every other variety of courtship imaginable. Extravagantly funny and overflowing with the rich cadences and droll loquacity of Southern storytelling, Call and Response is a remarkable joy to read.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

As in his previous works ( A Short History of A Small Place , etc.) Pearson's latest Southern comic novel finds its form in digression: there is a story, albeit a slender one, but the book's real substance lies in its anecdotes, detours and wrong turns. Among the characters whose lives illustrate the perils of falling--and staying--in love, are middle-aged Nestor Tudor, who conceives a hopeless passion for Mary Alice Celestine Lefler; Mr. Phillip J. King, who endures with stoic patience the distemper of his wife, trapped in a seemingly permanent state of cantankerous menopause; and dozens of peripheral characters who pursue personal obsessions and humdrum tasks, all with an edge of whimsy and a redemptive hope of romance.. Many episodes, notably the opening chapter about a visit to an itinerant strip show, are constructed with narrative vigor. But Pearson's writing, in sentences that run out of breath but keep going, accumulating details as they hurtle on, is arch and strenuous, and his deliberately tangled syntax may try the reader's patience.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

When Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler steps off the Greyhound from Berkeley Springs at the shankend of August and debuts more than your average share of comely features and enticements at the elevated buffet in the Number 2 shelter up by the reservoir, where Mrs. Phillip J. King is serving poached kidneys bearnaise in celebration of getting her consciousness raised by Dr. Dewey Lunt, Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler just purely captivates the imagination of Mr. Dick Atwater and most especially of Nestor Tudor whose daddy Nestor Tudor got knocked out by the stripper's walnut back in Chapter 1. Pearson's tortuous digressions and convoluted prose were hilarious in A Short History of a Small Place. In his fourth Neely novel, they have become wearisome. Buy only for devoted Pearson fans.
- Maurice Taylor, Brunswick Cty. Lib., Southport, N.C.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Avon Books
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 038071163X
• ISBN 13: 9780380711635
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432