Isle of Joy: A Novel - Hardcover

Daugherty, Franklin

4.2

5 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1881320782 ISBN 13: 9781881320784

Publisher: River City Pub, 1997

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The city commissioner of Mobile, Alabama runs into problems when a socialite lobbies for an art gallery and sidewalk cafe rather than supporting his plans to level the historic district and build a Christian theme park

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From Publishers Weekly:

Mobile, Ala., harbors all manner of misfits, schemers, fools and damn fools in this ribald send-up of aristocratic pretension amidst the mongrel reality of America. Like all good satirists, Daugherty pays no respect to geographic boundaries, class or race, subjecting all folly and vanity to his broad wit. Sexy, iconoclastic McCorquodale de la Rouchefoucauld (the natives say "Roshfookle"), the niece of a poor woman obsessed with uncovering proof of high-born lineage, is convinced she is ordained to be the savior of postmodernism. When H. Sloane Wolfe, a sexually predatory, socially prominent sexagenarian banking tycoon, falls in lust with her, she determines to parlay his attentions into her own avant-garde sidewalk cafe, which she hopes will be the cornerstone for establishing Mobile as the New World Mecca of postmodernism. Her plans run afoul of a group of nouveau-riche young Rotarian types who hatch a scheme to level the historic district and build a supermall and a "Six Flags Over Jesus" theme park. As the new South meets the old South, it's not exactly a case of the barbarians versus the cultured, since just about everyone who has something to say is more pedantic than intelligent. But Daugherty liberally salts his tale with subplots and themes involving greed, petty social ambition, artistic freedom, gay rights and Bible Belt puritanism. Happily, earnest social commentary never gets in the way of vigorous burlesque.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review:

The Isle Of Joy is a wickedly delicious parody of Mobile, Alabama's exclusive Mardi Gras society, comically rendering the human foibles and pettiness of all social interaction. A full range of idiosyncratic charecters from blonde bombshell McCorquodale de la Rouchefocauld to sleazy downtown Hubba Hubba Club proprietress Tonya de Luxe engage the reader as an all-out "culture war" erupts between those whose desire for progress and profit by the suburban "nouveau riche" against the old Mobile families trying to preserve their untainted bloodlines and prominent place in the "Great Chain of Being". The Isle Of Joy establishes Franklin Daugherty is a novelist of considerable talent. -- Midwest Book Review

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