Yonder Stands Your Orphan - Softcover

Hannah, Barry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802138934 ISBN 13: 9780802138934

Publisher: Grove Press, 2002

Synopsis

Barry Hannah has long been considered one of the country's best living writers, whose singular voice and wicked genius for storytelling have earned him legions of diehard fans. His first novel in ten years, Yonder Stands Your Orphan opens with the establishment of an orphans' camp and the discovery of an abandoned car with two skeletons in the trunk. Man Mortimer, a pimp and casino pretty boy who resembles dead country singer Conway Twitty, has just been betrayed, and his revenge becomes a madness that will ravage the Mississippi community of Eagle Lake and give vent to his lifelong fascination with knives. The pompous young sheriff is useless at solving the crimes, so Mortimer's only challengers are three eccentric Christians -- a disgraced doctor and two ex-bikers, all prey to their addictions -- and an African-American Vietnam veteran whose wife is ill with cancer. Mortimer has a hold on each one of them -- a long-standing debt, a forgotten crime, or responsibilities they cannot yet desert. Yonder Stands Your Orphan paints a searing picture of the American South and establishes Barry Hannah once again as one of the most important writers in America.

About this title

About the Author

Barry Hannah, described by Truman Capote as 'the maddest writer in the USA', is the author of eleven novels. Ray was nominated for the American Book Award and his collection of short stories, Airships, is regarded as a contemporary classic. Geronimo Rex won the William Faulkner Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He lives in Mississippi.

From Publishers Weekly

Hallelujah! After a 10-year absence, Hannah (Airships; High Lonesome) is back with a vengeance with a Southern gothic novel full of every kind of excess: violence, sex, religiosity, creepiness and humor. Here we have Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor, Harry Crews, Peter Dexter and Clyde Edgerton all squished together, baked in hush-puppy batter, dipped in honey and sprinkled with Jim Beam. Set in a lake community in the vicinity of Vicksburg, Miss., the story revolves around a fellow named Man Mortimer, a thief, pimp and murderer and those are his good qualities who physically resembles the late country singer Conway Twitty. On his trail are Byron Egan, a somewhat reformed biker-turned-preacher and prophet, and Max Raymond, a former doctor who plays saxophone in a bar band and has an attractive Cuban wife who sings, sometimes for the band, sometimes nude in her back yard. Meanwhile, the young town sheriff, distrusted since he hails from the North, manages to shock even the most degenerate denizens of the area with his affair with a luscious 72-year-old widow. The plot is kaleidoscopic, with flashes and slashes of wonder, humor and the macabre expertly mixed. Hannah tosses off linguistic gems on almost every page: "... sometimes he felt he was a whole torn country, afire in all quadrants." Describing a car, "It smelled like very lonely oil men." Reading today's fiction is too often like eating stale bread. With Hannah (finalist for the American Book Award and the National Book Award), just imagine your most mouthwatering meal, take a double helping and you've come close to the pleasure of reading this book. (July)Forecast: This is Hannah's first novel in 10 years, and arguably his finest. Grove is celebrating it with a 25,000-copy first printing, and retrospective reviews and features will ensure that readers sit up and take notice. Sales will be strongest in the South, but should be steady elsewhere, too. An evocative, Faulkneresque jacket will attract browsers.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802138934
• ISBN 13: 9780802138934
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352