All Saints' Day - Hardcover

Benoit, Brent

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1585673129 ISBN 13: 9781585673124

Publisher: The Overlook Press, 2002

Synopsis

"All Saints' Day" is a bold and provocative southern novel in the tradition of Walker Percy and John Kennedy Toole. Brent Benoit's debut movingly chronicles two generations of the Bueche family of Maringouin, Louisiana, a family of Cajun ancestry that has been defined by a tragedy-the accidental death of their gifted, infant child at the hands of his feeble twin brother. The lives of both parents, Ulysse (a.k.a. Russell) and Doreen, are driven toward this event, and in putting it behind them the child's brothers, Whitaker and Clayton, reach toward resolution while teetering on the verge of catastrophe.
In "All Saints' Day" the lives of simple people attain the status of myth. It is a novel that both captivates the reader in its rendering of a vanishing culture and surprises at every turn. Tautly written, harrowing and heart-filled, "All Saints' Day" marks Brent Benoit's emergence as a writer to watch.

About this title

About the Author

Brent Benoit was born in 1974 and raised in South Louisiana. He works as both a writing teacher at Louisiana State University and a homebuilder in Baton Rouge. He is a graduate of Loyola University in New Orleans and holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from LSU.

From Publishers Weekly

Louisiana native Benoit crafts a vivid, poignant composite portrait of a disjointed Cajun family navigating a blue-collar existence over more than three decades. Young Ulysse Bueche, called Russell because it sounds more American, grows up in the town of Maringouin, La., with few prospects other than working in an oil refinery or sugar mill; his violent-tempered, half-Indian father, Adam, has smacked him so hard the boy must wear special blue-tinted glasses for the rest of his life. Russell's French ancestry fades as he works transient jobs on freighters; meanwhile, his wife, Doreen, a local girl who squandered real talent as a softball pitcher, suffers back home from a recurrence of breast cancer. In episodes ranging in time from 1961, when young Russell is taken to the racetrack by his father and witnesses the gruesome death of a horse that Adam has inexpertly drugged, through the childhood and young adulthood of Russell's sons, Whitaker and Clayton, into the 1990s, Benoit enters the psyche of each of the family members. Though the characters' actions sometimes seem reported rather than viscerally experienced, the point of view shifts seamlessly, allowing Benoit to entrust the reader with such family secrets as Clayton's accidental death-by-pushing of his year-old twin, Ferdinand. The moribund Cajun heritage and language trail through this first novel like a nostalgic tune. When Whitaker, who works as an oily hotel receptionist, and his conflicted bride, Violet, announce to Doreen in the hospital that they have decided not to leave the town, the disappointing announcement leaves Benoit's tribe as hopelessly mired as they arrived.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Overlook Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1585673129
• ISBN 13: 9781585673124
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 345